Politics
Farotimi: Inside story of a legal storm

The decision on Tuesday, December 10, of a Magistrates Court in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State to deny Mr. Dele Farotimi bail meant that the embattled lawyer and activist would spend at least another 10 days in detention, pending the December 20 date for the resumption of trial.
It is Farotimi’s word against that of Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, a legal giant about whom he dedicated a substantial part of his controversial book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, detailing unpalatable encounters, which the Ekiti based elder statesman has branded defamatory and initiated a legal battle that has become the hottest topic in the Nigerian polity.
Since December 3, when operatives of the Nigerian Police Force stormed Farotimi’s office in Lagos in commando style, seized him and drove him all the way to Ekiti, heated debate for and against the activist has continued to rage.
Being a prominent member of the Obidient movement who has a penchant for expressing strong anti establishment opinions, supporters of the Bola Tinubu administration have not relented in their verbal attacks on him, while he continues to receive spirited support from the opposition camp, and much of the country’s human rights community.
Action and reactions
Chief Babalola, in initiating the criminal defamation case against him, sought to protect his reputation, one he has built over decades, but he appears to have so far achieved the direct opposite. The elder statesman continues to come under increasing scrutiny, both for the way and manner the police has handled the case, and further allegations in the media of corrupt practice against him over alleged bribery of five Court of Appeal Judges with $1.125 million to buy Adamawa governorship judgment for client Boni Haruna, a former governor of the state.
“Chief Afe Babalola’s chickens are coming home to roost! Facts are now emerging that, in fact, the reputation they are using the Police to protect doesn’t exist. Here is a Wikileaks’ U.S government cable detailing how Chief Afe and former President Obasanjo bought a Court of Appeal judgment with cash…” noted publisher, activist and 2023 Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore via his X account, in response to the report.
Indeed, since the legal process became public knowledge, the book in question, which had before now been under the radar, has been listed as international bestseller on Amazon, with thousands purchasing both hard and soft copies, a feat Farotimi had wanted to achieve when he claimed to, in his words, “blow his (Afe Babalola’s) dirty, tawdry secrets.”
Chief Babalola last week, obtained an order of the Federal High Court in Abuja halting the production and distribution of the book, while also ordering seizure of all copies of the book and the accruing royalties, a huge legal victory on paper, but in reality may have little effect. The book which is also on PDF format, continues to circulate, while the author had reportedly elected to donate all the proceeds to charity.
Chief Babalola also last week, petitioned the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee, (LPDC) asking it to strike out the name of Farotimi from the roll of legal practitioners in Nigeria for allegedly violating certain provisions of the rules of professional conduct for lawyers, but according to Inibehe Effiong, a fellow lawyer and a close associate of the accused, “Dele Farotimi had since abandoned and retired from law practice.”
Mission accomplished
Farotimi appears to have made up his mind from day one to write his book and damn the consequences. In it, he narrates how he once sued the Ekiti based legal giant for libel, not because he thought he could get redress, but because he knew he would eventually expose him for what he claimed he is, and had to do it in his lifetime to afford him the opportunity to defend himself, so that nobody would accuse him of speaking ill of the dead.
“I sued Afe Babalola because I was always going to blow his dirty, tawdry secrets. I did not know how long any of us had to live and I did not want to be dealing with the idiotic arguments that I could envision, of Afe’s proteges, arguing that I was slandering the dead if the book was to be published after his demise. He is already well in his 80s. I have offered him the opportunity to defend himself. He went to extra ordinary lengths to deny me my day in court,” Farotimi wrote in page 93 of the book.
Axes to grind
The object of Farotimi’s anger is the outcome of a litigation over a land dispute involving Major Gbadamosi Eletu and the Ojomu chieftaincy family. According to his account, Major Eletu had in 1977, bought about 20, out of about 224 hectares of land from the Ojomu family. However, the Lagos Government later acquired all the land and issued a Gazette to that effect.
The Eletu family then subsequently sued the government and claimed ownership of the whole 224 hectares up to Supreme Court. But the apex court in 2013 awarded only 10 hectares to the Eletus and declared that the remaining 214 hectares belonged to Ojomu, who were the clients of Farotimi.
Following the 2013 Supreme Court judgment, Chief Babalola became the lawyer for the Eletus, and according to Farotimi, was promised a fee of $10 million.
The Eletu and powerful lawyers within the Lagos State Judiciary and Ministry of Justice, he alleged, got a forged order of the Supreme Court and used it to get an order or writ of possession from Lagos justice administration system. Armed with these documents, they then allegedly got police, court officials and thugs to move to the disputed land in Osapa, where they wanted to take possession of their “property”.
But Farotimi and other lawyers asked the judgment enforcers to produce the “enrolled orders of the Supreme Court “ of their judgment, which they failed to provide. And on this basis, Farotimi was able to challenge Justice Atilade, who allegedly wrote the writ of possession on the basis of a “forged Supreme Court judgment.”
As the story went, when this was exposed, Atilade persuaded Farotimi to file an ex parte motion for the quashing of the writ of possession. They were told to say the reason for quashing is “documentary irregularities,” which Farotimi said was “euphemism for fraud”.
Farotimi alleged, however, that Chief Babalola, representing the Eletus, intervened in this second case in 2014, and succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to set aside its 2013 ruling and award the 214 hectares of Land to the Eletu family.
Confusion galore
But after this 2014 judgment, implementation became an issue on account of two obstacles: One being that the government acquisition gazette had recognized Ojomu as rightful owner, and second being the quashed writ of possession.
According to the narrative, which Business Hallmark cannot independently verify, it was at this point that some boys within the Lagos ministry of Justice, including the then solicitor general swung into action with the connivance of the Eletus to use the new Supreme Court’s judgment by subterfuge to get real state developers to start paying them.
Meanwhile, as the narrative went, the new individuals and the Eletus dumped Babalola because he was no longer needed. But he got angry and started using back door means to fight. He allegedly wrote a petition against Lawal Pedro, the Solicitor General, who allegedly had close ties to the LCPDC. He also, it was alleged, drafted ICPC in his fight against the Eletus, Pedro and the others, who “chased the lion away from his kill.”
According to Farotimi, Babalola took his frustrations to the Chief Justice of Lagos, Ayotunde Philips in a petition. It was in this petition that he saw his name mentioned and how Babalola had described him in disparaging terms. On account of this, he sued Babalola for libel.
The libel suit he filed, according to him, was not necessarily to get back at Babalola disparaging him, but to further continue the fight, and to “expose fraudulently procured Supreme Court judgment of 2014.”
However, he noted that Babalola saw through this and used his connections to his former boss and the chairperson of his marriage ceremony, Justice Oyekan Abdullahi to kill the libel suit, such that it was never heard, which then prompted him to write the book.
Babalola’s Position
However, Chief Babalola objected to Farotimi’s narrative, and has since submitted a petition to the police alleging that Farotimi criminally defamed him. The senior lawyer, had in the petition, listed the alleged defamatory statements as detailed below:
“That Aare Afe Babalola corrupted the Supreme Court to procure a fraudulent judgment in the service of his client.” See page IX.
“That Aare Afe Babalola, Olu Daramola, Olu Faro, and the law offices of Afe Babalola & Co, (Emmanuel Chambers) compromised the Supreme Court and the remaining semblance of integrity it might have had when they went back to the Supreme Court and got the Court to swim in the sewer of corruption and shameful self-Abnegation”. See page X.
“That Afe Babalola libeled me and the fact of the libel became known to me in a suit against Lawal Pedro SAN”. See page X.
“That I sued Afe Babalola SAN for libel and he leveraged his influence in the Judiciary to deny me justice”. See page X.
“That I have always been familiar with the fact of our perversion as a People and I have few illusions about equity and justice reigning in Nigeria but I had always assumed that there were lines that should never be crossed. I have, however, been slapped awake by the brazenness of the judicial brigandage unleashed on hapless citizens, corporations, and individuals by the Nigerian Supreme Court, acting under the direction of Aare Afe Babalola.
At least, five Justices of the apex court have been identified as guilty of odious corruption and or gross incompetence. It is sufficient to have them removed from their office and this is my petition to the Nigerian people and most definitely to the NJC”. See pages 10 to 11.
“The first we knew of the magic being put together by Afe and his elves must have been around the middle of July”. See page 49.
“While all this was going on, we had a meeting in the law office of Afe Babalola in Magodo, where Olu Daramola SAN made himself unavailable, and had us meet with Olu Faro, a younger counsel……..but Olu Faro Esq was remarkably insolent and assured that we were made aware of just how powerful the law office he worked for believed itself to be and how much above the law and the practice of law they believed themselves to be”. See page 52
“The judgement of the court was unanimous in giving judgment to the Eletus………But Justice Rhodes-Vivour laid a foundation for the fraud that was to come. He spoke of an unextinguished equitable interest in 254 hectares”. See page 52 to 53.
“ We quickly realized that the law office of Afe Babalola & Co, Emmanuel Chambers, had outsourced the judgment execution to another law office, the firm of S.B Joseph & Co; the firm had fraudulently and deliberately concealed the judgment of AKA’AHS and had underlined the words of Justice Rhodes Vivour to deceive, and perhaps, mislead Atilade or as is more likely, Atilade was always a part of the original fraud”. See page 56.
“But even as Atilade J. played the contrition game, she was already part of the game plan being staged together by the grandmaster of judicial corruption in Nigeria, Afe Babalola. I have come to the conclusion that the required form of the application and her ruling were all part of the insidious plans of Afe Babalola, his band of crooked lawyers and coterie of crooked/incompetent justices of the Supreme Court”. See page 59.
“The battle to quash the warrant opened my eyes to the extent of the rot in the court system and I came to the knowledge of the sickening realities of the systemic putrefaction. The Supreme Court’s Judgement was doctored by the confederation of lawyers in Afe Babalola’s chambers and the law offices of S.B Joseph & Co, and the end desired by the confederacy was sought with the active connivance of the head judge of the Lagos Division, Atilade J.”. See page 60.
“As the mountain of evidence in prove of the Eletus’ fraud began to pile up and in view of the order that Atilade had granted quashing the fraudulent warrant that she had issued and as Afe came to realize how useless the original judgment had become, Afe went back to the accomplices at the Supreme Court and this is the only logical explanation for the shameless and brazen review of the fraudulent judgment by the second seating of the court, where the Justices destroyed whatever doubt one might have harbored of either corruption and/ or incompetence”. See page 64.
“It was around this time we began to hear rumors of a return to the Supreme Court by Afe Babalola and his magical elves and the rumors became real when I got a call from Tokunbo Williams SAN, who informed me of the receipt of a motion on notice before the Supreme Court, seeking to correct an error in the judgment reproduced below”. See page 64.
“But apparently, we had underestimated the extent of the putrefaction of the Supreme Court and the extent of Chief Afe Babalola’s corrupt reaches into the innards of the Supreme Court”. See page 64.
“The quashed warrant of execution became the basis of Afe Babalola latest excursion to the Supreme Court and the error of my acceptance of the corrupt offer of an exparte application to quash the warrant for “Documentary Irregularity” became obvious to me. I knew before the motion was heard, that the court was working to the conclusion desired by Aare Afe Babalola”. See page 67.
“The Lagos crowd had been snookered into a corner by the exertions of my chambers and we had demolished the original fraud that was hatched before Afe secured the first of the two judgments………..The Supreme Court cannot hide behind the incompetence of counsel as it has a duty to examine its own appalling intellectual indolence, corruption or incompetence”. See page 70.
“But the court as though enthralled by whatever Afe, the Circus Master, had Promised the Justices, acted with utmost carelessness about the integrity of the court, the interest of the citizens and the State that they had been sworn to protect. The conspiracy was always a step ahead of us because some of the clients mistook key members of the confederacy of friends and helpers”. See pages 70 to 71.
“The Attorney General had been dragged into the matter. The brutal attempt at enforcement of the original judgment against organized estates and corporate establishments had served to galvanize extremely critical and sensitive mass of the affected peoples and this was when Afe Babalola lost his influence on the Eletus and the Lagos Mafia, whose original brief to procure enforcement of the judgment became the dominant force in the conspiracy muscling out the Afe gang. With Afe Babalola rendered impotent, Lawal Pedro muscled in on the queue”. See page 71
“…… he knows more about the case that culminated in the Supreme Court judgment and she also knew everything that I had known about the Eletus fraud and Afe Babalola’s shenanigans”. See page 76.
“But Afe knew that he could get the Supreme Court to do whatever he wanted and to rule however he asked. Pedro knew this too and he being the original ‘Lagos boy,’ showed Afe a bit of Lagos magic. Afe Babalola and the Eletus might have killed the buffalo but had no way from feeding from the carcass. We have turned the corrupt triumph at the Supreme Court into a pyrrhic victory and it was at this point that Pedro craftily inserted himself into the plot”. See page 80.
“If Afe Babalola might be likened to the lion, Lawal Pedro and the Lagos gang are the originally Africa wild hyenas. They literally chased Afe Babalola off his kill. They repackaged the conspiracy, cut the losses and went for the lower hanging fruits”. See page 80.
“This was enough until “eedi” (karma) caught up with Afe Babalola; he dragged Lawal Pedro before the Lagos High Court and the Eletus before ICPC”. See page 81.
“Sometimes in 2016, I started hearing rumblings of some serious fight between Chief Afe Babalola and Lawal Pedro. I was told that Chief Afe Babalola had written a petition to the LPDC, alleging that Lawal Pedro had railroaded his client Gbadamosi Eletu, into an agreement that circumvents his own legal agreement with the Eletus. About same time, I also heard that the ICPC had been pressed into action against the Eletus, Lawal Pedro and S.B Joseph, which seemed quite incongruous, given the fact that the Eletus were not public officers this event stirred an interest in me. I got my popcorn at the ready and waited to be entertained by the squabbling thieves”. See page 81.
“When Amina Augie JSC railed against Chief Afe Babalola’s professional conduct, or misconduct in the Bayelsa case, she did so either as an ostrich or out of ignorance. Afe has been corrupting the Supreme Court from ages past and had led it to commit the most egregious acts of evil and wanting injustice. Afe knows what her ladyship does not know or pretend not to know: that justice does not live in the Nigerian court or you can get the court to do whatever you want, as long as you know who to speak with and who to pay”. See page 83.
“Afe’s letter to Tunde Phillips, then C.J of Lagos State, showed how frustrated he had become about the inability to execute the fraudulent judgment. In spite of the fact that he asked the Supreme Court to do what it had never done before……. the Eletus had formed a new confederacy and had neither room or use for Afe Babalola, who had overestimated his own importance to the plot and failed to discern that he had defectively become unnecessary to the new plotters”. See page 84
“Afe is so enmeshed in his corruption that he has lost all sense of propriety and or fairness”. See page 84
“I have absolutely no interest in taking Afe Babalola’s corrupt money but I was not going to allow a corrupt, amoral man, devoid of any integrity, to define me for posterity when none of us will be around to dispute the hagiographic account of the event”. See page 84
“Afe Babalola was imperial by the suit I filed in court; it was designed to blow open the tawdry details of his dirty deals with the Supreme Court…….it was a thing to be having a quarrel among thieves, each knew how far they might push their claim but it is quite another thing to get into “roforofo” fight with a man seemingly incapable of walking way from a fight”. See page 85
“The perils were being faced by all key members of the twin camps of conspirators………I must close with a caveat; I am not privy to what happened in the conclaves of crooks….” See page 85
“But there was a second incentive. This was the promise to get rid of the nuisance that my libel suit against Afe represented. I knew when I was filing the suit, that Afe was not in a position to ever defend the suit. He has no defense and he never anticipated that I will ever become aware of his libel and if he did, he wasn’t concerned about what a mere mortal like me could do to a god like him. Afe was offered assurances that he need not worry about the case. The conspirators had it in hand and would extinguish the fire.” See page 88.
“I sued Afe Babalola because I was always going to blow his dirty, tawdry secrets. I did not know how long any of us had to live and I did not want to be dealing with the idiotic arguments that I could envision, of Afe’s proteges, arguing that I was slandering the dead if the book was to be published after his demise. He is already well in his 80s. I have offered him the opportunity to defend himself. He went to extra ordinary lengths to deny me my day in court”. See page 93.
Fierce response
Chief Babalola maintained that, “all these statements are false and incorrect, written deliberately to destroy my reputation. Dele Farotimi referred to me severally in his book as the Doyen of the legal profession.”
He thus requested the police to “investigate the matter and stop Dele Farotimi from further damaging my reputation, the reputation of my law firm and that of my lawyers.”
“We also request that all existing hard copies of the said book should be recovered by the police while we take other necessary legal actions against Dele Farotimi.
“In addition, his admission of corrupting the judiciary should also be investigated. We request that this should be treated with utmost urgency in other to preserve the dignity of the temple of justice and the legal profession.”
Farotimi had meanwhile, prior to his arrest, narrated his ordeal in the hands of the police, alleging that the plot was to silence him, but nonetheless maintained his resolve to continue his advocacy.
Coming Legal Battle
Farotimi faces 12 count charge of cyber crime filed against him by the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun at the Federal High Court in Ado Ekiti, and 16-count Criminal Defamation charge at the Magistrates Court, while a few other individuals mentioned in the book have also approached different courts to sue and demand damages.
The Federal High Court, last week, granted him bail in the sum N50m, but the magistrate court, whose jurisdiction over a “federal offence” has been questioned by some lawyers, denied him bail last Tuesday, a decision that did not go down well with some observers.
“The offense is bailable,” argued Festus Ogun, a legal practitioner and managing partner, FOLEGAL. “Why was he not granted bail? The magistrate insisted on written, formal application. And this is strange to me as a legal practitioner. What we know is that in the magistrate court, even when you don’t apply for bail, you are ordinarily meant to be admitted to bail. But in a very debatable circumstances, Dele Farotimi was not granted bail. For me, I’m afraid that if people have been saying that there is the likelihood that he would not be granted fair trial in Ekiti, that seems to have aligned with such fears.”
Many have questioned the legality of the whole trial, given that neither Lagos where Farotimi is based, nor Ekiti State’s Criminal Law of 2021 include the crime – Criminal libel or defamation.
Writing in an article recently, Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a lawyer and rights activist, argued the alleged crime for which Farotimi is being charged, is not a crime in Ekiti.
“Three years ago, Ekiti State enacted into law the Criminal Law of Ekiti State, no. 12 of 2021, which repealed and replaced the state’s pre-existing Criminal Code Law of 2012. Comprising nine parts, 429 sections and 140 pages, Ekiti State’s Criminal Law of 2021 does not include the crime Criminal libel or defamation. Section 70 of the law contains a crime of causing disaffection or breach of the peace through offensive publication but that is a simple offence punishable by six months in prison. It is not in issue in this case,” he wrote…
“Even if the Magistrate had jurisdiction, which he did not, the crime alleged was punishable with two years in prison. Under section 4(5) of the Criminal Law of Ekiti State, this is classed as a “misdemeanor” at best, that is to say “an offence punishable by imprisonment for not less than six months, but less than three years.” These are bailable on liberal terms. Offences punishable by more than three years in prison are called “felonies.”‘
However, another legal practitioner, Babatunde Ogala, SAN, sees it differently. Defamation, he says, is a federal offence under the Criminal Code, which is applicable in the entire Southern part of the country.
Ogala who spoke on Arise TV, also noted that the argument that the case ought to have been filed in Lagos does not hold water because the book in question is not limited to Lagos.
“Some have argued that because the alleged defamatory book was published in Lagos, Lagos ought to be the place where the court should have jurisdiction. But that’s not so. When a publication is made, it’s published to the whole world. It’s a matter of the place where the person, who is allegedly defamed resides or where the publication is brought to his attention that has jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is limitless and not confined to just a place that book was published,” he said.
“In this instance, the book, having been published and widely read, and the complainant, Chief Afe Babalola, is resident in Ekiti from where he became aware of this alleged defamatory comment, he lodged a complaint there.
“That takes me to whether it is criminal or civil. Under the Criminal Code Act, there’s a criminal defamation, and under the civil act, there is a civil defamation. In the case of criminal defamation, Chief Babalola or indeed any person is at best a complaint.
“He has laid a complaint about criminal defamation and it is the police and other law enforcement agencies who can investigate and elect to prosecute or not prosecute. If they find merit, they proceed to prosecute. They could also do so directly or through the ministry of justice. In this case, the police, being so empowered, have elected to go for direct prosecution under the Cybercrime Act, and under Criminal Code Act. In the Federal High Court, he is tried under the Cybercrimes Act, while in the Magistrate Court, he is charged under the Criminal Code.
“Now, the matter has been submitted for judicial intervention, it is best for us to let the court decide one way or the other.”
On the question of jurisdiction of Ekiti magistrate, given that defamation is to criminal in Ekiti, he said, “In some states, like Lagos and perhaps in Ekiti, they have made their own criminal laws, which may have eliminated defamation, but that also doesn’t repeal the federal law. Until it is repealed, it remains a law.”
Asked about Odinkalu’s opinion on the matter, Ogala said it was left for the judges to decide.
“Chidi is a lawyer like I am, and if all lawyers agree on a opinion, there’s nothing for the Judges to do. Chidi has expressed his opinion, which I don’t necessarily share. But again, where are we today? The issues have been tabled before the court, it is left for the defendant and the prosecution to present their cases, and the court will decide. It is going to be good for our jurisprudence for the court to determine one way or the other.”