Activist and attorney, Dele Farotimi, on Sunday, disclosed that he used to be nonetheless confronted with 4 free fits in numerous states filed by way of participants of the Aare Afe Babalola legislation place of business.
Farotimi disclosed this era talking throughout the Toyin Falola Interviews on Sunday.
Farotimi’s disclosure comes then the Founding father of Afe Babalola College, Ado Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), on January 27, assuredly to take back the circumstances instituted in opposition to Farotimi.
Following Afe Babalola’s petition to the police commissioner in Ekiti Climate that Farotimi defamed him in a secure titled ‘Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System,’ the police arrested the activist attorney and arraigned him sooner than two courts in Ekiti.
In consequence, Farotimi stood trial for alleged prison defamation sooner than an Ekiti Climate Justice of the Peace Court docket, Ado Ekiti District and as nicely for alleged cyber-bullying sooner than the Ado Ekiti Category of Federal Top Court docket.
Babalola had introduced his withdrawal of the case in opposition to Farotimi bringing up the intervention of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, and alternative supremacy conventional rulers.
However that includes on Sunday’s dialog, with the theme: “Politics, Law and Society,” Farotimi disclosed that era the police had withdrawn prison fees in opposition to him following Babalola’s petition withdrawal, he nonetheless confronted 4 civil fits throughout other states, all filed by way of participants of Babalola’s legislation place of business.
“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 unmistakable.
Farotimi emphasized that his secure used to be now not written in a hour of inactive communicate or baseless accusations however instead a well-researched paintings documenting his studies and observations in regards to the Nigerian judicial device.
“I did not sit down in a beer parlour; 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.”
Pushing aside claims that the talk atmosphere his secure is a private combat, Farotimi insisted that what’s on trial isn’t his recognition, however the Nigerian felony device 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 reaffirmed that his arguable secure, ‘Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System’, isn’t an assault on people, specifically felony luminary Leading Afe Babalola, however instead a critique of systemic corruption throughout the judiciary.
He stressed out that his paintings used to be written in pursuit of justice, now not non-public vendettas.
“Chief Afe Babalola is more than old enough to be my father,” Farotimi stated. “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.”
Talking, Farotimi maintained that his critique geared toward institutional failings instead than people.
“Multiple names were mentioned in the book, and offices were mentioned. I did not set out to libel anybody,” he defined. “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.”
In step with him, Nigerians should interact with uncomfortable truths if the rustic is to revel in significant reform. “We have built a system that rewards deception and punishes truth. I am being sued not because I have lied, but because I have dared to speak the truth.”
Farotimi additionally criticized those that brushed aside his secure with out studying it, labelling their movements as intellectually inactive.
“Ninety per cent 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 philistinic and illiterate, if they would dare to read, there would be no arguments as to the proof of what I have written.”