To begin with, in his book, Julius Caesar, while dismissing his wife’s fear for his death, the famed English writer, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), made Julius Caesar, the hero of the book, to declare: “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.” That was many years ago. And that happened in a very distant part of the world.
Here in this tormented country of ours called Nigeria, sometimes when the Nigeria-Biafra war was raging with all of its ugliness and bestiality, it got to a stage where our own man of literature, the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, wrote a book in which he told the world about his frustrations in the face of heart-rending man’s inhumanity to man. He called that book, The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka. In the book he declared: “The man dies in the face of all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”
These two instances suffice for an illustration of what I want to say about the legal battle currently raging between Goliath Afe Babalola and David Dele Farotimi in the Nigerian legal terrain. In the words of William Shakespeare, Dele Farotimi is a valiant man. He will not be moved. He will not be intimidated. He will not die until his appointed time. The whole world saw him in handcuffs some days back when he appeared in court to face the charges of defamation. The masters who ordered that he should be put in handcuffs can charge him of any fanciful offence they feel can slake their taste for a pound of flesh from him. But the man in Dele Farotimi will never die because is he a terror to tyranny.
The rest of us know that he was chained like a criminal, which he is not, because he refused to keep silent in the face of judicial tyranny. He is being tormented by the powers that be in Nigeria because he is a drum major for truth and justice. He is being made to look like a criminal because he has opened the ears and eyes of ordinary Nigerians to hear and see how naked the kings who have been dancing in the public are. The world is now agog with the odious cankerworm beneath the judicial wig in Nigeria.
Is there somebody who can tell us of any person who stood solidly against injustice that was not at one time or the other chained like a criminal? Being chained like criminals and thrown into jail is often the price that good people have to pay to save their nations and their people. Those who are not very lucky among them pay that price with the lives. Among many others, Dele Giwa and Ken Saro-Wiwa belong to this group. But today, their legacies flourish.
Now, let the truth be told. The handcuffs lifted Farotimi far above the level of those who chained him. He is henceforth as tall as Nelson Mandela in the eyes of 250 million Nigerians. Secondly, the handcuffs assured Nigerians who believe and clamour for justice that Chief Gani Fawehinmi lives on in the person of Dele Farotimi to speak for us, to get battered for us, to go to jail for us, and in the process to keep our hope alive. The handcuffs assured Nigerians that there is still a man who has the courage to call criminality by its ugly name and be ready to face the consequence for our common good.
Dele Farotimi in handcuffs! What a great honour, a crown for the martyr for truth and justice! Believe it or not, in spite of the sufferings involved, I envy Dele Farotimi and not his tormentors. He has proved that he is a man for others, a patriotic Nigerian, a justice crusader and a liberator. Like the biblical Mary, Dele Farotimi has chosen the better part for the sake of Nigerians who are persistently being tormented by those who should protect them from the arrant wickedness and the dehumanizing insensitivity of the criminals who pass for our leaders.
“It is not the duty of the oppressor to free the oppressed. It is the duty of the oppressed to break his chains.” Does the reader perceive any contradiction in this stirring statement made by Farotimi who is currently wearing the chain made for the oppressed? There is no contradiction whatsoever. It is the way it has to be. The masses of the oppressed people known as the hoi-polloi, the wretched of the earth, cannot break their chains. A person like Dele Farotimi is in the position to break the chains for them because he knows what they know and does not lack what they have.
Nobody expects the jobless masses, the homeless masses, the poor okada and keke riders, the silent majority, the scum of the society, the rabble, the have-nots, the under-privileged, the depressed and voiceless class, the street urchins, the hungry people and beggars, who are constantly made to squeak and kowtow in the presence of the police like frightened dogs to break the chain. In the words of Prof. Chinua Achebe, when Farotimi discovered that what has been happening in the judiciary is “too dangerous for silence” he raised an alarm. That alarm reverberating in every nook and cranny of the world today. There is nothing that those who chained him can do about the truth he has spoken. What is written has been written. There is no weapon in the wide world with which to chain the truth he has spoken.
In every age, in every clime, in every country, there must be people who are honest, upright and courageous enough to tell leaders who think they are gods that they are ordinary mortals like everybody else. In the Holy Bible, when some Pharisees advised Jesus to find a place to hide because Herod was determined to kill him, instead of running away, he had the guts to call Herod a fox, after which he assured Herod that he was prepared to surrender to death in order to accomplish his earthly mission (Luke 13:31-33).
When the same Jesus confronted the Pharisees on account of their hypocrisy and outright neglect of justice and love of God, a lawyer there, who felt that his expert knowledge of the law placed him above all rebuke even when he was clearly in the wrong, interjected: “Master, when you speak like this you insult us too.” In reply, Jesus gave it to him directly: “Alas for you lawyers also because you load on men burdens that are unendurable, burdens that you yourselves do not move a finger to lift…Alas for you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowledge! You have not gone in yourselves, and have prevented others going in who wanted to.” (Luke 11:42-52).
You remember that Jesus was eventually killed for being the truth and for standing for truth and for justice. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” (John 14:7). “I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of the truth listen to my voice.” (John 18:37). They killed him without knowing that his death was where his definitive power is. Nobody can kill the truth.
So far, and until it is proved that what he wrote in his book, Nigeria And Its Criminal Justice System, is false, what Nigerians who are not versed in the detailed knowledge of the law know as Dele Farotimi’s crime is that he has told the world that the people who are in charge of the justice system in Nigeria are primarily responsible for the total collapse of justice in the country. Anybody who did not know that prior to the 2023 elections was properly educated during and after the elections. The collusion of evil people in politics with evil people in the justice system has reached the stage where one Dele Farotimi is not enough to tackle the rot.
The man, Dele Farotimi, I know is the one I see in the social media platforms and on the Arise Television. His disposition I know is the one I make up in my mind by listening to him talk about Nigeria and Nigerians. I never met him in person. But I pray that I will have the good opportunity of meeting him in person someday. If my conjectured assessment of his disposition is right, I wish to liken him to Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), an American writer and freedom fighter.
In 1842, when Thoreau refused to pay his Massachusetts poll tax on the grounds that money raised by the tax was used in supporting slavery, he was arrested and jailed for that illegal action. In his famous article, Essay on Civil Disobedience, where he explained what happened and how he felt, he wrote: “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear…The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it…Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.”
He then described how glad he was to suffer for his conviction that it is against the law of God and law of man to enslave fellow human beings. While in the prison he felt that he had more freedom than those who put him there. He wrote: “I did not for a moment feel confined and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.” If anyone wonders what would make any normal human being to feel that he is free when he is caged behind bars as a prisoner of conscience, here is Thoreau’s reason: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
Dele Farotimi is a just man. Hence he deserved being in prison handcuffed like a criminal. Remember he calls Nigeria an evil forest, which is what evil men in politics have turned our dear country to be. Below are a few of his statements on fear that made me to liken him to Henry David Thoreau. He says:
- It is alright to have fears, what is wrong is to receive the fears in one’s spirit, and to then allow these fears to dictate your actions and inactions. When fears stand in the way of your purpose, you must find the grace to discount such fears, except reason advises otherwise.
- Fear narrows perspectives and thereby limits your capacity to see your options clearly, enforcing tunnel vision on the afflicted; flight or fight. Look again; those are only two of the several options available to the unafraid. Get rid of you fears, your fears, fear you.”
- Tyrants do not scare me, and I am completely unfazed by their kept dogs, be those in uniform or out. Faced by those shorn of fears, they are naught but scarecrows. Men of straw in need of darkness to be men!
Once more, the people who put him in handcuffs can charge him of any offence. But the rest of us know that he was chained like a criminal because he refused to keep silent in the face judicial tyranny. It is unfortunate for his enemies, who are the enemies of ordinary Nigerians that they calculated wrongly by thinking that he would succumb to intimidation. One book written by a simple but an intelligent and upright man has exposed and rattled those who are destroying Nigeria in the name of law. David has once again dealt with Goliath.
If they like, let them keep Dele Farotimi in the prison until he meets his God. Nelson Mandela remained 27 years plus in the prison before they released him. When he came out, the former President of America, Bill Clinton, said about him: “Every time Nelson Mandela works into a room we all feel a little bigger, we all want to stand up, we all want to cheer, because we would like to be him on our best day.” It will be difficult if not impossible for his enemies to ever attain the height to which they have elevated Dele Farotimi.
In conclusion, I am reminded of what an American journalist, Louis Fischer, said about Mahatma Gandhi in his book, Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World. According to him, Gandhi succeeded in his nonviolent war against the British Government because of three main factors. The first is that Gandhi neither cared for sensual pleasures, for comfort, for praise nor for promotion. The second is Gandhi’s indefatigable determination to do what he believed to be right. The third factor is that in spite of the fact that Gandhi was fragile and timid by nature the zeal for a cause dissolved his timidity and loosened his tongue. Consequently, he described Gandhi as a dangerous and uncomfortable person to deal with by any enemy because his body which could always be conquered gave his enemies little purchase over his soul. I just believe that Dele Farotimi is equal to the task. May the God of justice see him through!
