Activist and lawyer, Dele Farotimi, has revealed that he is still battling four separate lawsuits filed in different states by members of Aare Afe Babalola’s law office, despite the withdrawal of criminal charges against him.
Farotimi made this disclosure on Sunday while speaking during The Toyin Falola Interviews.
His remarks come months after the founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), announced on January 27 that he would withdraw the legal cases filed against him.
The controversy began when Babalola petitioned the Ekiti State Commissioner of Police, accusing Farotimi of defamation over claims made in his book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System.
This led to Farotimi’s arrest and subsequent arraignment on charges of criminal defamation and cyberbullying in separate courts in Ado Ekiti.
Following interventions from the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, and other prominent traditional rulers, Babalola decided to withdraw the case.
However, during Sunday’s discussion themed ‘Politics, Law, and Society’, Farotimi stated that while the criminal charges had been dropped, he was still facing multiple civil suits.
“My inability to speak to certain aspects of this issue is borne out of the fact that, despite the discontinuation of the criminal proceeding, I still have four suits that I am aware of, in four different states of the federation, filed by members of the same law office, against my person,” he disclosed.
Farotimi defended his book as a well-researched work based on personal experiences and observations rather than idle gossip.
“I did not sit down in a beer parlour; I was not at an officers’ mess; I was not gossiping. It was not idle, cheap talk. I wrote a book,” he asserted. “Let us deal with veracity. Anybody can go and read and then come back and challenge me with the lie that I have told.”
He also dismissed the notion that the legal battles were a personal vendetta against him, instead framing them as a broader challenge to Nigeria’s judicial system.
“This is not a trial of Dele Farotimi. Let nobody make that error. It is a trial of the legal system that we have built as a collective,” he declared.
Farotimi reiterated that his book was never intended as an attack on individuals, including Afe Babalola, but was instead a critique of systemic corruption in the judiciary.
“Chief Afe Babalola is more than old enough to be my father,” he stated. “I did not set out to destroy the man or to tarnish his image. Nothing personal. I was writing about the institution of the judiciary.”
Addressing his critics, he clarified that his work was focused on institutional failures rather than individuals.
“Multiple names were mentioned in the book, and offices were mentioned. I did not set out to libel anybody,” he explained. “I simply told the truth of what I saw. All I did was write a book. Maybe we have become too accustomed to lies and allergic to truth, to the point where telling the truth has become a sin.”
Farotimi emphasized that for Nigeria to undergo meaningful reform, citizens must confront difficult realities rather than suppress them.
“We have built a system that rewards deception and punishes truth. I am being sued not because I have lied, but because I have dared to speak the truth.”
He also criticized those who dismissed his book without reading it, calling out what he saw as intellectual laziness.
“Ninety per cent of the persons criticizing me for whatever they believe my tactics to have been in writing the book have not read the book,” he argued. “If Nigerians would stop being so philistinic and illiterate, if they would dare to read, there would be no arguments as to the proof of what I have written.”
