Nigeria’s Police Service Commission (PSC) on Tuesday – approved the promotion of Akinwale Kunle Adeniran, the Commissioner of Police in Ekiti State, among 10 others, to the Assistant Inspectors General of Police (AIG) position.
This is even as the December 2/3 arrest of human rights lawyer Dele Farotimi which the Nigerian Bar Association described as “illegal” happened under Akinwale’s watch.
On July 2, Farotimi released a book titled Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System. Months after the 116-page book’s release, Afe Babalola, a senior lawyer in the Nigerian legal circle, accused Farotimi of defamation.
The book buttressed a longstanding public suspicion that Babalola was among those befouling the Nigerian judicial by corrupting judges with cash and material bribes to influence judges from lower courts to the Supreme Court.
Babalola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) had deployed armed policemen to brutalise and arrest Farotimi on December 3 over a defamation allegation. The human rights lawyer was also transported from Lagos to Ekiti —where the nonagenarian wields significant influence— on a five-hour road trip.
Apart from the defamation charges initially brought against Farotimi at an Ekiti State Magistrate Court by Babalola’s team, Kayode Egbetokun, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), filed 12 additional charges against Farotimi at an Ekiti Federal High Court on December 6.
An Abuja High Court also subsequently ordered multiple security agencies in the country to seize physical copies of Farotimi’s book from all bookstands and stores nationwide.
The court also temporarily restrained Farotimi from “further publishing, selling, circulating, advertising, or distributing the physical/hard/digital/ soft copies of the book online, electronically, physically or by any other means”.
Farotimi’s trial then led to criticism from Nigerians with many calling for a protest to be staged against what they called “an unlawful arrest”.
While defending Farotimi’s questionable arrest carried out in a Gestapo-like manner, however, Akinwale said the alleged offences committed by Farotimi included “defamation of character, cyberstalking and other things”. He claimed that the allegations had been “fully established”.
A Wikileaks classified United States diplomatic cable had exposed how Afe Babalola and former president Olusegun Obasanjo, way back in 2004 allegedly purchased a Court of Appeal ruling that ensured the then Adamawa State governor, Boni Haruna, remained in office.
According to the US diplomatic cable, an attorney for then Governor Haruna, who worked for Afe Babalola, confirmed that the favourable ruling by the Court of Appeal “was ensured in typical Nigerian fashion: with cash.”
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