Morakinyo Akinosun

ADO-EKITI – A magistrates’ court sitting in Nigeria’s Ado-Ekiti has granted ₦30 million bail to human rights lawyer and activist Dele Farotimi.

At the hearing of the bail application on Friday, Magistrate Abayomi Adeosun ruled in favour of Farotimi’s bail request.

The magistrate stipulated that the bail conditions included two responsible sureties and required Farotimi to surrender his international passport to the court. Additionally, he was instructed not to grant media interviews while the case was ongoing.

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 also 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”.

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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