Dele Farotimi: I didn’t listen to pleas from Obasanjo, Kukah – Afe Babalola

Dele Farotimi: I didn’t listen to pleas from Obasanjo, Kukah – Afe Babalola

By Jeffrey Agbo

Founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Afe Babalola, has said he decided to drop charges against lawyer, Dele Farotimi, because of the intervention of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi.

Farotimi was facing defamation and cyberstalking charges in Ekiti for claiming in his book that Babalola was corrupt.

However, during the visit of the Ooni to him over the weekend, Babalola said that although he did not listen to pleas made previously to drop the charges against Farotimi, he would listen to the Ooni’s plea.

He 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.

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“Your coming is unquantifiable in terms of money, who Am I? When the colonialists came here in the 17th century or thereabouts, they found as a fact that Yoruba land was a highly organised society with an advanced system of government with each town headed by an Oba who was regarded as a replica of God on earth. His words were commands.

“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.”