Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), the founder of Afe Babalola University in Ado Ekiti, denied on Thursday that he was using his influence to deal with Dele Farotimi, a human rights attorney who was remanded by the Ekiti State Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
This came as the Take It Back Movement, an organization organized by Omoyele Sowore, the former African Action Congress presidential candidate, started organizing protests in Ekiti, Lagos, Abuja, and London. The group also criticized the judiciary and police for their handling of the case.
Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba sociopolitical organization, also criticized the magistrate’s decision to remand Farotimi.
After receiving a petition from Babalola, the Ekiti State police detained Farotimi in Lagos on Tuesday and charged him with defaming Babalola in a court in Ado Ekiti on Wednesday.
The defense attorney requested bail for his client while the police asked the court to place Farotimi in a detention facility. However, Chief Magistrate Abayomi Adeosun ordered Farotimi to be held and postponed the case to December 10, 2024.
In an interview with The PUNCH in Ado Ekiti, Owoseni Ajayi, the attorney for Afe Babalola, dismissed the alleged influence in the case, stating, “We cannot deal with him against the law.”
We wouldn’t have reported him to the police so that due process might occur if that weren’t naturally attainable. He was arraigned in court as soon as the cops arrested him.
“The people who are commenting on the matter do not know what he wrote, they are saying he was arbitrarily arrested, but he was not arbitrarily arrested,” said Ajayi, a former Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General in Ekiti State, in response to accusations that Farotimi was detained without cause.
“Why is everyone claiming that he was the victim of influence? Don’t they want him to stand up for himself? Is it using influence to ask him to defend himself in court for all the lies he put in a book and spread?
Are they implying that a person who has been defamed ought to take it that way in order to prevent accusations of influence manipulation? Nothing compares to exerting clout or influence in this situation.
“Farotimi is a lawyer, but he was castigating the Supreme Court, describing it as a haven of corruption without any shred of evidence. If he should be dealt with according to the law, is that using influence?
He added, “Are those who are talking about the matter, describing Farotimi as an activist, saying he should be defaming people because he is an activist with the hope of gaining popularity?”
On Thursday, the TIB posted a flier on social media with the hashtag “Nationwide/Global Protest Against the Judiciary,” urging people to gather on December 10, 2024, at specific locations in Ekiti, Abuja, Lagos, and London.
According to Juwon Sanyaolu, the Take It Back organization’s national coordinator, the organization will stage the protest on Thursday in order to expose what he called the “impunity of the Nigeria Police and the conspiracy of the judiciary.”
“The Gestapo’s method of arrest, or what I refer to as the kidnapping of Farotimi from Lagos to Ekiti, validates our long-standing condemnation of the unlawfulness of some police practices. We are all at risk when private citizens can now employ the police to harass another person.
It is troubling that the accused was not given oral bail by the court either. It demonstrates how the state permits injustice for the majority and selective justice for a wealthy few.
“It is on this note that we will be challenging on the street, the employment of the instruments of the law against not just Farotimi, but also the majority of Nigerians who have been victims of this. All Nigerians of good conscience must join the action to demand accountability in the judiciary,” Sanyaolu told The PUNCH in an interview.
In a post on X on Thursday, Sowore said the mobilisation “is taking serious shape.”
“The Abuja movement on December 10 is taking serious shape. People are to converge as early as 7 AM at the Federal Ministry of Justice, where the office of the Attorney General of the Federation is based.
“We must also occupy the entire Federal High Court Complex and then march on to the Police HQ. We must not forget that every crime against humanity in Nigeria is usually hatched between the @PoliceNG and the Nigerian judiciary,” he wrote, urging people to “please arrive early!”
On Wednesday, Farotimi’s lawyer, Temitope Temokun, while faulting the arrest of Farotimi from Lagos, said the Ekiti command never invited Farotimi as claimed by the police.
Temokun said, “He was invited by Zone 2 (regional headquarters of the police) on two occasions, and he went there.”
“He went there after being invited twice by Zone 2 (the police’s regional headquarters),” Temokun stated.
However, given what transpired in Lagos, why would you invite someone from that city to Ekiti? He was never invited, though, and as a lawyer, I would have told him not to go if he had been.
According to the attorney, the transportation of Farotimi from Lagos to Ekiti “is a wrong foundation that nobody can justify.”
“It has raised doubts about that process, regardless of what they will even do tomorrow.”
Kicks from Afenifere
Afenifere criticized the court’s decision to remand Farotimi in a statement released on Thursday by its Deputy Leader, Oba Oladipo Olaitan, and the National Publicity Secretary Deputy Leader, Prince Justice Faloye.
“The proceedings at the Ado-Ekiti Magistrates’ Court yesterday (Wednesday), where Dele Farotimi was denied bail despite his attorney’s application and ordered to be remanded at the correctional center for such billable offence of defamation after each of the 16 counts in the charge had been read and to which he respectively pleaded not guilty, only confirmed the fears of well-meaning people all over the world that these processes were driven by extraneous considerations outside the facts and laws of the case,” the group said.
“This is further buttressed by the fact that the book containing the alleged defamatory statements was authored and published in Lagos where the defendant resides and was abducted and at which airport the petitioner claimed a copy was obtained.
“As contained in the charge the only ridiculous reason for shopping for Ado-Ekiti as the forum of arraignment is that the book titled ‘Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System’ was received and read all over the world including Ado-Ekiti. The only inference that could be drawn from this is that there is no territorial limit for the trial of the alleged offence, which is laughable.
“It is ironical that the judiciary which act is apparently the subject of Farotimi’s book and trial, may by this insensitive indiscretion also be putting itself on trial before the world either for incompetence or apparent undue influence.”
