Human rights activist and lawyer Dele Farotimi, on Sunday, disclosed that he was still faced with four separate suits in different states filed by members of the Aare Afe Babalola law office.
Farotimi revealed this at the Toyin Falola Interviews on Sunday.
Farotimi’s disclosure comes after the founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), agreed on January 27 to abandon the lawsuits filed against him.
Following Afe Babalola’s plea to the police commissioner in Ekiti State alleging that Farotimi defamed him in a book titled ‘Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System,’ the police arrested the activist lawyer and charged him in two Ekiti courts.
As a result, Farotimi faced trial for alleged criminal defamation in an Ekiti State Magistrate Court in Ado Ekiti District, as well as accused cyberbullying in the Ado Ekiti Division of the Federal High Court.
Babalola had announced the withdrawal of the case against Farotimi, citing the involvement of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, and other prominent traditional rulers.
However, during Sunday’s conversation, with the theme “Politics, Law, and Society,” Farotimi revealed that, while the police had dropped criminal charges against him following Babalola’s petition withdrawal, he still faced four civil suits in different states, all filed by members of Babalola’s law firm.
“My inability to speak to certain aspects of this issue is borne out of the fact that, despite the discontinuation of the criminal proceeding, I still have four suits that I am aware of, in four different states of the federation, filed by members of the same law office, against my person,” he revealed.
Farotimi highlighted that his book was not published out of idle chatter or unsubstantiated charges, but rather as a well-researched effort chronicling his experiences and insights concerning the Nigerian justice system.
“I did not sit down in a beer parlor; I was not at an officers’ mess; I was not gossiping. It was not idle, cheap talk. I wrote a book,” he declared. “Let us deal with veracity. Anybody can go and read and then come back and challenge me with the lie that I have told.”
Farotimi denied that the dispute around his book is a personal battle, insisting that what is on trial is not his character but the Nigerian legal system itself.
“This is not a trial of Dele Farotimi. Let nobody make that error. It is a trial of the legal system that we have built as a collective,” he asserted.
He reiterated that his contentious book, ‘Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System,’ is not an attack on individuals, particularly legal scholar Chief Afe Babalola, but rather a critique of systemic corruption in the court.
He insisted that his work was written in the sake of justice, not personal vendettas.
“Chief Afe Babalola is more than old enough to be my father,” Farotimi said. “I did not set out to destroy the man or to tarnish his image. Nothing personal. I was writing about the institution of the judiciary.”
Farotimi maintained that his critique was aimed at institutional failings rather than individuals.
“Multiple names were mentioned in the book, and offices were mentioned. I did not set out to libel anybody,” he explained. “I simply told the truth of what I saw. All I did was write a book. Maybe we have become too accustomed to lies and allergic to truth, to the point where telling the truth has become a sin.”
He believes that in order for Nigeria to undergo significant reform, Nigerians must confront painful truths. “We’ve created a system that favors lying while punishing truth. I am being sued not for lying, but because I dared to tell the truth.”
Farotimi also chastised individuals who disregarded his work without reading it, describing their acts as intellectual laziness.
“Ninety percent of the persons criticizing me for whatever they believe my tactics to have been in writing the book have not read the book,” he argued. “If Nigerians would stop being so philistine and illiterate, if they would dare to read, there would be no arguments as to the proof of what I have written.”
