Activist and lawyer Dele Farotimi says he is still facing four separate suits filed by members of the Aare Afe Babalola law firm in four different states.
Farotimi made this known on Sunday, February 16, 2025, on the Toyin Falola Interviews.
It would be recalled that the founder of Afe Babalola University in Ado Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), recently withdrew his defamation case against the activist.
Trouble started for Farotimi after Babalola wrote a petition to the police commissioner in Ekiti State, claiming the activist defamed him in his book, ‘Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System.’
As a result, the police arrested Farotimi and arraigned him before two courts in Ekiti.
However, after the intervention of top traditional rulers led by the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, Babalola withdrew the case against the activist lawyer.
However, despite Babalola’s withdrawal of the criminal charges against him, Farotimi said he is still facing four civil suits filed by members of Babalola’s law office in different states.
He said, “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.”
While dismissing the controversy surrounding his book, Farotimi insisted it is not based on idle talks or beer parlor gist. He added that it is a well-researched work documenting his experiences and observations about the Nigerian judicial system.
“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. Let us deal with veracity. Anybody can go and read and then come back and challenge me with the lie that I have told,” Farotimi maintained.
He added that what is on trial is not his reputation but the Nigerian legal system 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.
The lawyer-activist stressed that his controversial work was written in pursuit of justice and not an attack on individuals.
