By Timothy Samuel
Afe Babalola University founder Ado Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), said on Thursday that the Ekiti Provincial Magistrate’s Court had used his influence to deal with Dele Farotimi, a human rights lawyer who remanded him on Wednesday.
It launched the mobilization of protests in Ekiti, Lagos, Abuja and London as the Take It Back movement, a group convened by Omoyele Sowore, a former presidential candidate for the African Action Conference.The group criticized the police and the judiciary in handling the case.
Also, Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba socio-political organization, failed to remand Farotimi by a magistrate.
Police in Ekiti State arrested Farotimi in Lagos on Tuesday following a petition written by Babalola and arrested him before the court of Ado Ekiti on Wednesday over allegations adjacent to slander Babalola.While police prayed to the court to remand Farotimi at the correctional facility, the defense attorney pleaded for bail for his client, but Chief Magistrate Abayomi Adeosun ordered the remand because Farotimi postponed the matter until 2024-12-10.
Afe Babalola’s lawyer, Owoseni Ajayi, shook off the rumored influence in the matter in a chat with a reporter, saying, “We can’t let him go against the law.”
“It is not naturally possible, otherwise we would not report him to the police for due process to take place. Soon he was arrested by the police and arrested in court.”People commenting on this issue do not know what he wrote and say that he was arbitrarily arrested, but he was not arbitrarily arrested,” he said.
“Why is someone saying that influence is being used on him? All the lies that he published and circulated in books – is it using influence to ask him to defend himself in the legal court? Are they saying that someone who has been slandered should accept it that way so that people do not use influence to condemn him? There is nothing like using influence or influence here.
“Farotimi is a lawyer, but he was accusing the Supreme Court and describing it as a haven of corruption without fragments of evidence. If he should be dealt with according to the law, is it using influence?
He said, “Are you describing Farotimi as an activist and saying that those who are talking about this issue should slander people because he is an activist in the hope that he will gain popularity?””
In 2024-12-10, a leaflet issued by TIB and circulated on social media tagged as “National/global Protest against the Judiciary” called on the public to converge at designated points in Ekiti, Abuja, Lagos and London in 2024-12-10.
Juwon Sanyaolu, the national coordinator of the Take It Back movement, said on Thursday that the movement would roll out actions to burden what he described as “the impunity and judicial intrigue of the Nigerian police.””
