Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, The Tipping Point, captures the unfolding scenario around the hitherto unknown Dele Farotimi, author, human rights lawyer, and political activist. He has been in the eye of the storm since early December 2024. His resolve to tread on an unconventional path has internationalized his local struggles. By demonstrating rare guts in exposing what most Nigerians know and/or lack courage to say for want of iron-cast evidence, he shot himself into history. And wittingly or unwittingly, feathers have been ruffled, especially that of Afe Babalola, one of Nigeria’s most respected and most accomplished lawyers, who claimed that he is defamed by Farotimi’s publication.
For clarity, “The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point… It is a place where the unexpected becomes the expected, where radical change is more than possibility. It is – contrary to all our expectations – a certainty.” The reality is that Farotimi could not have imagined that his 104-page book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, published in early July 2024, and which had recorded low sales, would gain traction and turn Amazon bestseller. That was what Robert Merton propounded as the law of unintended consequences, which according to him, are driven by five causes: “error, basic values, short-term vs long-term interests, ignorance, and self-defeating prophecy.”
Following Babalola’s petition, Farotimi was arrested in a gestapo-style by a freewheeling section of Nigerian Police from his Lagos base and whisked down to Ado-Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti State, and arraigned in a magistrate court on December 5. The distance between Lagos and Ado-Ekiti is about 319.2km and takes at least 5 hours journey by road. He was eventually granted bail on Friday December 20 after the wishy-washy discretion that had bad optics for the country’s administration of justice. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a Nigerian human rights activist, lawyer, professor, and writer observed that, “Dele is not going through a legal trial; he is going through judicial terrorism and legal terrorism. This is hostage-taking using excuse of legality.”
In the words of Victor Hugo, “Nothing else in the world…not all the armies…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” The long-held disenchantment with the rot in Nigeria’s judiciary seems to have found vehement expression by Afe Babalola’s resolve to ‘teach’ Farotimi a lesson for daring to wake a lion from its slumber. It turned out an anticlimactic scar to the 95-year-old man; not because he wanted to ventilate his grievances, but the manner of Farotimi’s arrest, the preferred court of litigation, his detention, parading him on handcuffs and filing of multiple cases at different courts across the country against the same person, smack of intimidation and vendetta.
By Babalola’s miscalculation, he has spotlighted the pages of Farotimi’s book on judicial corruption even to those who would not have read it in the years ahead. As such, if he eventually wins the libel suit against Farotimi, the uneven process will mar the credibility of the outcome. And it is tantamount to winning war without winning peace. Perception is critical in strategy and in pursuit of personal or collective interests. The positive energy, simultaneous mobilization and impregnable solidarity that ensued in favour of Farotimi, are immeasurable. That was not the intention of his traducers in going for the jugular.
The concern of Farotimi’s critics was not that he lied but how he will produce the evidence. They are also embittered because his work strived to dent a trailblazer whom great men and legal juggernauts defer to. They are enraged that he refused to toe the path of political correctness. But he stuck to his gun. He remains assertive in his convictions! In a dramatic turn of events, the sledgehammer of elitist show has capitulated in the face of effervescence of civil liberties and rights of free speech. The idea of hitting hard on the judiciary for sobriety and self-rediscovery has become inevitable. Strangely, Farotimi is prepared for the guillotine to make that change. He wrote what everybody knows and called out some names.
After all, the study on ‘Corruption in Nigeria’ carried out by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, published in 2024, “found that judges and magistrates were paid the largest cash bribes.” Before this report, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) corruption index study in 2020 revealed that “corruption in the Nigerian justice sector was the most severe of all sectors surveyed, due to the scale of electoral and political cases handled by Nigerian courts.”
With acerbic tone, the 30-page valedictory speech of retired Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad, last year, opened a reeling can of worms and disgusting stench from Nigeria’s judiciary. His damning verdict is summarized thus: ”This is not the judiciary I loved and aspired to serve in! Dr. Hoffman of Chatham House identifies types of judicial corruption in Nigeria as follows: political interferences, bribery, extortion, nepotism, misuse of public funds and resources, and administrative perversion. These have caused huge reputational damage to the judiciary in Nigeria
In essence, Babalola may have discovered that he went against the tide of public sentiments and inadvertently lowered his public rating. A fight between a top dog and underdog usually favours the later. Those thorny issues that Nigerians complain about concerning the judiciary largely played out in his suit against Farotimi. The momentary persecution of Farotimi has turned him to a global icon and conscience of the nation.
Fortuitously, Babalola has helped to spread Farotimi’s message across the globe. The court order stopping further sales of the book may be a wild goose chase if the producers of pirated copies find it profitable. After all, smugglers have had a field day in Nigeria. More than ever before, Nigerian judiciary will continue to dominate public scrutiny until the bad eggs are shown the way out. If this momentum is discontinued without any change in the perception of the judiciary, more Farotimi’s with unabashed radicalism would emerge to challenge the status quo. An idea whose time has come cannot be handcuffed.