When 95-year-old legal luminary Afe Babalola weaponized the Nigerian police to arrest and detain activist Dele Farotimi over alleged defamation in his book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, he inadvertently succumbed to the notorious “Streisand effect.”
This is the same phenomenon I previously wrote about in relation to former First Lady Aisha Buhari, whose dramatic abduction and torture of a university student over a tweet about her weight transformed a fleeting commentary into a nationwide cause célèbre in December 2022.
Farotimi’s arrest has catapulted his book from obscurity to Amazon’s Best Sellers list, a trajectory likely unintended by Babalola. The very passages Babalola sought to suppress are now illuminated under the unforgiving glare of global attention, which ensures that they will be dissected by countless eyes rather than languishing in relative anonymity.
In his obsessional bid to silence Farotimi, Babalola exemplifies the adage of being “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” What was once a limited audience—perhaps a handful of legal aficionados in Nigeria’s southwest—has now exploded into a worldwide readership, all thanks to the spectacle of Farotimi’s arrest and detention.
If Farotimi had merely expressed strong, hurtful opinions that skirt specifics, he would have been in the clear. Consider, for example, activist Deji Adeyanju who recently disparaged two People’s Democratic Party (PDP) officials with derisive monikers.
He is being threatened with a lawsuit by Umar Damagun, the Acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Sen. Samuel Anyanwu, the Acting National Secretary of PDP, for using derogatory terms to describe them.
He called Damagun a “tea man who goes to serve tea in Femi Gbajabiamila’s house” and Anyanwu a “kilishi man” who serves “kilishi” at Femi Gbajabiamila’s house. He also said, “This current PDP is in the pocket of Nyesom Wike at the national level.”
These are opinions. Opinions are protected by law. In fact, vigorous, vituperative, unflattering opinion uttered in moments of inflamed passions can’t be defamatory in Nigerian law.
There are many precedents for this. For instance, in Bakare v Ishola, the defendant, in a moment of heightened emotions, said to the plaintiff in Yoruba, “Ole ni o! Elewon! Iwo ti o sese to ewon de yi.” English translation: “You’re a thief! Ex-convict! You have just come out of prison.”
Justice C.J. Jibowu ruled that these were vulgar insults that weren’t actionable. “It is a matter of common knowledge of which this court takes judicial notice that people commonly abuse each other as a prelude to a fight and call each other ‘ole! Elewon!… which…no one takes seriously as they are words of heat and anger,” he said.
In another case, Ibeanu v Uba, the defendant was accused of defaming the plaintiff by saying in Igbo, “Josiah, Josiah, Ongi kpo ndi ori bia zulu ewum, bia malu uma najum.” Translation: “Josiah, Josiah, you brought the thieves with whom you stole my goat, and you have now come to ask me.” The judge in the case also ruled that this didn’t constitute defamation.
So, it has been established in Nigerian law that mere “vulgar abuse” isn’t defamatory. In American media law, vulgar abuse, such as calling someone a “criminal idiot” in the heat of anger, is called rhetorical hyperbole, and is not defamatory.
Saying some people are in the pocket of another or that they are servile to another isn’t even vulgar abuse or rhetorical hyperbole; it’s simply innocuous, if uncomplimentary, opinion. Only a litigious terrorist would sue anyone over that.
In the end, Babalola’s overreach has not only backfired but also ensured Farotimi’s book and its contentious claims will live on in public memory. What could have been a quiet legal victory now stands as a cautionary tale of hubris, miscalculation, and the unintended consequences of silencing dissent in the digital age.
