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By Farooq A. Kperogi

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.

Thus, Babalola’s actions serve as a textbook illustration of the Streisand effect: the paradox whereby attempts to obscure information end up amplifying it.

The term itself originates from American entertainer Barbra Streisand’s ill-fated attempt to suppress an aerial photograph of her California mansion. Before she sued the California Coastal Records Project to remove the image, only six people had viewed it—two of whom were her lawyers.

In other words, only four people had seen it unprompted. Post-lawsuit, nearly half a million people downloaded or viewed the photograph, all thanks to her efforts to bury it.

That’s precisely what’s happening to Afe Babalola. In his attempt to stop Farotimi’s book from being read by people, he gratuitously invited global publicity to the book. Apart from climbing to Amazon’s global Best Sellers’ list, search for the book caused the website of Roving Heights Bookstore to crash because of unusually high traffic.

According to Arise News, Farotimi’s book is now “ranked number one in elections and 555 among all books on the platform,” and that it “has also topped categories in general elections, political process, and political commentary, with a 4.9-star customer rating.”

The book was initially self-published in July this year. I can bet my bottom dollar that no more than 50 people initially bought the book, and even fewer people read it. However, in the aftermath of Babalola’s overreaction, more people have bought and read the book, particularly the parts of the book he wants hidden.

He has unwittingly given permission to millions of people to insult him and repeat the “libel.” The urge to repeat and publicize negative information that someone wants suppressed through threats is called reactance in psychology.

Babalola has provoked mass reactance in Nigeria, similar to what Aisha Buhari did in 2022.

Babalola should never have ordered the arrest and detention of Farotimi. He’s the top dog and Farotimi is the underdog. All over the world, across countries, cultures, and generations, whenever there is a battle between the top dog and the underdog, the underdog almost always wins in the court of public opinion, even if the underdog is in the wrong.

The passages Babalola objected to in Farotimi’s book do strike me as potentially libelous if Farotimi can’t provide evidence to back them up. Libel is false publication that hurts someone’s reputation and causes them to be shunned by right-thinking members of the society.

Farotimi’s allegations aren’t opinions. They are specific charges that claim to be statements of facts, which can irreparably injure the reputation of Babalola. As Kenneth Ikonne, a brilliant, dispassionate lawyer who, by the way, is a fan of Farotimi, wrote in a Facebook post titled “THE WAY FORWARD FOR DELE FAROTIMI!,” “anyone with a basic understanding of the principles of the law of libel, will concede that Mr. Farotimi is in hot soup.”

Babalola erred in using his influence to cause Farotimi to be arrested and detained. He could have just sued him quietly and let the courts decide on the merits or otherwise of his suit.

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.

* Source: Tribuneonline