Frontline legal luminary and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Afe Babalola, has forgiven activist lawyer, Dele Farotimi.
Babalola said he decided to forgive Farotimi following the intervention of emminent personalities like former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and Bishop Mathew Kukah.
He had dragged Farotimi to court for allegedly defaming him in his recently published book “Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System.”
However, in a statement, Babalola said: “The Ewi of Ado has come here to meet me on this matter, former president Obasanjo has intervened. The same goes for Bishop Matthew Kukah and a host of other prominent Nigerians to ask for the exact thing you have come to ask for this evening. My answer to them has been no, but today my answer is yes.
I was a lawyer who defended the EFCC law, yet I’m corrupt, I was given an oil bloc; when I looked at the money and saw that it was too much, I rejected it, yet I’m corrupt, I was offered ministerial appointments twice, I rejected it, yet I’m corrupt because whatever I am, I don’t want anybody to say I made it through corruption.
I have given lectures against corruption with my papers in many universities globally. For someone to allege that I have won my cases through corruption, it’s an attempt to defame me. That was why I rejected all appeals earlier made to me.
But when I heard that Ooni was coming, I knew I was in a fix today. There is nothing I’m going to gain from his imprisonment and there’s nothing I want from the so-called damages. I am not in quest of more wealth; I’m rather concerned about managing the one I have already. Dele Farotimi is hereby forgiven. On this occasion, I say yes.
Hmmmmmmmm