By Suyi Ayodele
Each time I watched the video of Dele Farotimi arrest in Lagos, I remembered my arrest in my office on Mission Road, Benin City that Monday afternoon in 2007!
When a matter is before the courts, no mortal is allowed to discuss it in the open. Lawyers call that sub judice. I want to believe that infraction is punishable. I have been locked up for five days for what they called “contempt of court”. The experience scares me to date.
My arrest by a team of seven policemen, a court bailiff, a lawyer, one unknown individual and the claimant in the civil matter involved, happened in less than 15 minutes. I was served Form 48 (Notification of contempt) and Form 49 (Committal to Prison) within an interval of six minutes.
Before I could read through the contents of the paper, I was surrounded by policemen. The only call I could make was to my landlady to help in picking up my son from school. The mother was away on a journey. What did I do wrong?
I was just a company representative in the matter involving a neighbour and the telecommunications company I worked for. The man complained about the noise from the telecommunication mast erected in the next compound to his. He went to a Benin High Court. He lost. While the case lasted, I was the one representing the company. My name and designation duly recorded by the court.
Not satisfied, the man approached some officials of the Edo State Environmental Sanitation Board. Somehow, a matter was filed at a magistrate court by a body which called itself Edo State Public Sanitation Officers. An unknown name and body. I was the one who received the court papers on behalf of the company and sent to represent the company each time the matter came up. The magistrate court also had my details.
As a preliminary measure, the presiding magistrate issued an “Abatement of Nuisance Order”, asking the company to shut down the power-generating sets on the site. The argument that the matter had been decided by a higher court of record would not persuade the magistrate. Not even the unassailable argument that the Edo State Sanitation Workers is a non-juristic body would hold water. The court just ordered for a shutdown of the base station!
I wrote a memo asking for compliance, when I received the enrollment order. The technical department shut down the site immediately. The base station started running on batteries. However, a maintenance contractor on a routine check discovered that the site was down, when the batteries got drained, and powered it on generators. Needless to say, the two generators were silent ones, noiseless! He did that on a Sunday night.
Early Monday morning, the complainant (Edo State Public Sanitation Officers) went to the court. The nominal complainant accompanied them. They filed for contempt, got the magistrate to hear the motion and ordered for issuance of Form 48, and signed Form 49 alongside.
A court bailiff was on hand to serve “all parties”; policemen were at alert to enforce the order. With the speed of light, execution of the court order was enforced. Pronto, I was “railroaded” to a jailhouse. And guess what, the magistrate who issued the arrest and detention order joined the Chief Judge of the state on prison visitation that same Monday. The only matter she heard and ruled on was my case! The prison visitation exercise was to last till Friday. The implication is that she would not be available to hear me “to show cause why I should not be committed to prison”. In any case, with the issuance of Form 49, which “cause” is left for me to show?
But the Legal Officer of the Edo Police Command had compassion on me. He listened to the circumstances of the matter. He used his discretion. Rather than calling the prison official to take me, he ordered that I be detained in police custody. Then he did something more wonderful. He instructed that I should be allowed to stay at the counter and not in any cell. I stayed in his office from morning till he closed. Then, I would be returned to the police counter. My car served as my bed at night and the Inspectors’ bathroom made available for my toiletries! God bless the man wherever he is!
I spent Monday through Friday in police custody. It was not a nice experience. A senior lawyer, a friend, who saw me at the Edo Police Headquarters asked for the details of the matter. He was livid. First, the contempt should not have been issued against me but the company, he noted. I was just the company’s representative. Second, he contended that the order should have been to arrest the most senior manager of the company. But the contempt was issued against me in flesh and blood!
He explained that it was when the most senior manager was not available that the officers next to him in ranks could be picked up. Again, he said that Form 49 (committal to prison) ought to have been issued if the accused did not show cause to obey the court order. Most importantly, he faulted the idea of a magistrate issuing a warrant, an open-ended warrant, for an arrest for contempt and not making herself available to hear if the accused has purged himself of the contempt.
The senior lawyer was frank. Something was fishy. But he restrained himself from saying what he suspected. “Suyi, you are just a victim of the rots in the judiciary”, he told me. Then he assured that he would try to get the magistrate to take some hours off the prison visitation to hear the matter. That did not happen. And guess what, the man, who complained about the nuisance from the generator, was ‘visiting’ me daily in police custody. There was a time that he complained that I was not in the cell or prison as “ordered by the court.” He stopped that daily ‘mourning’ when a police officer told him off and threatened to lock him up should he come to tell them how to do their job.
To confirm my suspicion of a dirty game in the matter, when the magistrate finally made herself available on Friday, the complainant, the Edo State Public Sanitation Officers, was never in court, nor was the illegal body represented by a counsel. The nominal complainant also stayed off. The magistrate simply vacated the “order of committal to prison”, and I was set free! Nobody mentioned the matter thereafter. Life simply returned to normal for “all parties”! This incident happened in 2007.
I summoned the courage to write about the issue between the Lagos lawyer, Dele Farotimi, and Chief Afe Babalola, a lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), in the matter of defamation pending before a magistrate court in Ekiti State, because Babalola’s lawyers had chosen to address a press conference over the matter. If not, I wouldn’t have risked the idea of another possible “contempt of court!”. It is not for fun that our elders say that: Eni tí Sàngó bá tojú è wolè, kò ní bá won bú Oba Kòso (Whoever has witnessed the devastating ramming of thunder would never join in insulting the king of Koso -Sango).
Dele Farotimi wrote a book, “Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System.” Snippets from the book indicate that Farotimi raised serious allegations against Chief Afe Babalola (SAN). He railed against Babalola in a case in which the old man was his opposing lawyer. Afe Babalola, won the case, according to the information in the open space. Farotimi believed that the senior lawyer won because he “procured” the judgement for his client! That is a weighty allegation to make. The old man expectedly was livid. Who won’t in that circumstance? Babalola petitioned the police for criminal defamation. Because Babalola resides in Ado Ekiti, he took his petition to the Ekiti State Police Command.
The police in Ekiti moved to Lagos. Farotimi was arrested, bundled to a vehicle to answer ‘present”, before a magistrate court in Ado Ekiti. He was remanded in prison custody. He was granted bail today.
I have read all the dramas that have played out. A senior editor that is close to me; sorry, I am the one close to him, (before dem catch me for insubordination) said that the “children of anger” would come into the fray. He was right! The Internet is practically on fire over the matter.
The entirety of Farotimi’s anger against the judiciary in his book is captured in his corruption allegation in that critical sector of our life. Is the fiery lawyer, right? Is he justified to be that venomous about our judiciary?
We may pretend about everything. But we cannot pretend that that there are no allegations against the judiciary especially in view of the quick recourse to the “go to court” cliche! The cliché, “go to court”, the new language of the present ruiners of our beings, confirms more than anything, the terrible situation our judiciary is. Once your opponent tells you to “go to court”, just know that he or she has the court in his or her pouch!
But is Farotimi right to have accused Chief Afe Babalola of “procuring” judgement in the matter he, Farotimi, lost to the senior lawyer at the Supreme Court? The answer is difficult to conjecture. Yes, if Farotimi has concrete evidence. And no, if he has no evidence but was just bitter because he lost the case.
But if on the other hand, Farotimi was just emotional about losing the 2013 Supreme Court case in the land matter between his client and Babalola’s client, and he decided to bring the roof down on everybody, I would commend him to learn from the ways of the hunters of old and their sharing formula.
The practice among hunters is that in a group game hunting, whoever fired the bullets that killed the game takes the head. It does not matter if the fortunate hunter is the youngest and the least experienced. The head of a game killed in a group hunting exercise is significant in all aspects. But its esoteric significance is what matters to the hunters. Don’t ask me for that here, please.
Farotimi has an onerous task. He must prove his allegations against Chief Afe Babalola. His second option is not too good. If he cannot prove the allegations, he must admit his mistakes and apologise or face the consequences of his actions with all boldness! A senior lawyer once told me that the major ingredient of libel is malice. This is what Farotimi has standing against him should he not have any proof!
The legal icon too, Chief Afe Babalola, has the right to defend his name. After over six decades at the Bar, Chief Babalola would be dead if he allowed the accusations to just go away like that. I would not buy the wisdom in the traditional philosophy of “Àgbà ló ma nrí ara gbà” (An elder should be able to accommodate all insults). No! That wisdom will not apply here, except the erring partner becomes sober and ready to make amends in the open!
If Dele Farotimi has no proof of his accusation, I would advise that he should look for all the Àró and Òdòfin (senior chiefs) of Yorubaland to help him beg Baba Afe Babalola. And if his case is like that of the hunters in a game sharing exercise, who had evidence (his gunshot sound) but was not concrete enough, he should still assemble the elders to assist him in placating the old man in Ado Ekiti.
