In Nigeria and beyond, there has been a surge of support for Dele Farotimi, the lawyer, author, and publisher who was reportedly taken from his Lagos home by the police last week and transported to Ekiti State.
Farotimi was alleged to have committed civil offences against Afe Babalola, a fellow lawyer and founder of Afe Babalola University. Farotimi claims he had previously filed a libel suit against Babalola in Lagos.
Babalola gained international attention early in 2023 when he gave £10million to King’s College London to establish the Afe Babalola African Centre for Transnational Education.
£ 10 million is a lot of money: despite being one of the top 10 in endowment and donation income in the UK in 2020, the university had that year received just £16.8m.
But this is not about Babalola’s wealth, nor does he deserve to be ridiculed for his success or affluence. Similarly, no one should face the apparent misuse of state instruments against them.
Curiously, it was the police who allegedly apprehended Farotimi on behalf of the senior lawyer, and he is being detained in Ekiti. Many of those outraged by these events are demanding Farotimi’s immediate release.
Not me. I want Farotimi held—in Ekiti. I want his luxuriant beard to remain rebelliously unmanicured as television cameras, from CNN to Al Jazeera, arrive.
I want Farotimi prosecuted. In Ekiti. In front of the world’s mass and social media anywhere and everywhere from where you go to bed to where you wake up.
I want Farotimi persecuted if they will, in Ekiti and front of the world.
No, I am not joining the frenzy to have this man hurriedly released because he has an important demonstration to make. If he had personally authored this script, he could have done it no better.
To begin with: last week, I arrived at Amazon to find Farotimi’s, “Nigeria and its criminal justice system,” topping the “General Elections & Political Process” best sellers books.
Think about that. It means that people really do want to learn what the concept and substance of Nigeria’s criminal justice system are.
But first, let us talk again about the Nigerian police. Now we can do so starting from the enlightenment granted to us last Thursday by the Inspector General Kayode Egbetokun, whom I celebrated in this column last year.
At the time, he was bragging about what a difference he would make.
He deployed “tiger” and lion metaphors to describe his readiness “to chase away all criminals in Nigeria.”
One and a half years later, last week, he was confessing his unsuitability for the job but not admitting that he should resign. The justice system, he said at an event for which he did not have the stomach to appear personally, is weak, sick, and requires a complete overhaul.
He then admonished Nigerians to stop blaming the police.
Why did the IGP need to resort to a public forum, after 18 months in office, to acknowledge something Nigerians have recognised for decades, instead of resigning to make way for someone with solutions to offer?
I have often stated that Nigeria has a police force but lacks a policing system. The force, rather than serving society, operates as an instrument of offence and defence for the privileged.
Even its Mission and Vision statement is a lesson in philosophical self-betrayal:
“To have a professionally competent, service-driven, rule of law complaint and people-friendly Police Force that will support the agenda of government for economic recovery and growth as well as social integration and political development in Nigeria. A Police Force that is well-positioned for an appropriate and adequate response to the dynamics of criminality in our contemporary society.”
Maybe the police meant to describe itself as being “rule-of-law compliant,” but failed to find the personnel to write compliant in place of complaint?
Even if it got that right, why does the police interpret the constitution as being to support the government, any government?
Section 214(3) of the constitution expressly affirms the duty of the force relating to “the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order.”
Throughout the rest of the world, that public interest comes first.
And the first three of the nine primary functions of the police, in Section 4 of the Police Act 2020 are: “To prevent and detect crimes, and protect the rights and freedom of every person in Nigeria as provided in the constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and any other law; maintain public safety, law and order; and protect the lives and property of all persons in Nigeria.”
Nowhere are the police mandated to support a government, but in practice, what it does in Nigeria is serve anyone in power and against the public.
Any Nigerian who has ever needed the police, including when a relative is murdered, knows that an “appropriate and adequate response to the dynamics of criminality in our contemporary society” does not exist.
By the way, you cannot read the Police Act on the website of the Ministry of Police Affairs, or on Egbetokun’s NPF. Nobody seems to care about the right thing.
Instead, the force lends itself to falsehood, extortion, intimidation and suppression.
Last week, for instance, the ECOWAS Court ordered Nigeria to pay N5m to a man who was tortured by the police.
Amnesty International has documented how the police used excessive force against protesters during the nationwide #Endbadgovernance demonstrations last August.
#ENDSARS demonstrators have enjoyed no justice either, as does anyone unfortunate enough to encounter police malice anywhere in Nigeria. It is crucial to emphasise this when Egbetokun decries Nigeria’s rotten justice system—not as an apology, but as though it were outside his remit.
This reality is exemplified by the police assuming the uncivil role it now plays in the civil case involving Farotimi in Ekiti. In the 2023 article where I welcomed Egbetokun, I implored him to commit the force to a regime of training, re-orientation, and accountability through rigorous, published reporting.
Two years earlier, I had drawn attention to the practice of Nigerian institutions refusing to report on their work.
What is fascinating in the unfolding Farotimi spider web is that, in these early skirmishes, there are many people who are unprepared. What I counsel is that you read the book, which is currently available at eBay, Bookswagon, Rovingheights, Waterstones, alibris, and Agendabookshop.
Keep in mind that a July 2024 survey by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, exposed members of the Nigerian judiciary as the biggest bribe collectors in the country, meaning that justice is on sale in the streets, like cheap prostitutes in street corners.
Introducing his book, Farotimi observes:
“By some miracle that is uniquely Nigerian, we have managed to evolve a Criminal Justice system. The tragedy, however, is that it is the system itself that is criminal and the ones who should be citizens have become victims in the vice-grips of a three-pronged system…
“…The Nigerian judiciary is not the hope of the common man, but is in truth, completely hopeless and unfit for purpose. Pretty much a mirror of everything Nigeria.”
Please keep our Dele safe!
Credit: Sonala Olumhense