Ooni’s face-saving intervention forgot the Supreme Court [OPINION]

By Abimbola Adelakun

The case between Dele Farotimi and Afe Babalola reached a climax when we were informed early on Monday morning that the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, had intervened. Media reports indicated that the traditional ruler and a consortium of elders met Babalola the previous night. Even though the story was reported in multiple media outlets, no journalist appeared to have witnessed it; they only reported what was reported to them. Consequently, the same account of the occasion was repeated almost word for word across media channels without any of the recyclers asking relevant questions, such as who instigated the reconciliation meeting and why Farotimi, the key figure in this case, was remarkably missing from the whole picture.

We thank the Ooni for playing the peacemaker, but the trouble with offering an agboolé -style resolution for issues bordering on the integrity of modern institutions is that they merely put the bubbling crisis in abeyance and ultimately compromise an opportunity to positively strengthen the forces that shape our lives.

Ooni’s intervention resonates meaningfully within the context of our society and its traditions where the egungun was—and still treated as— a part of juridical institutions whose mystique must be preserved. If an egungun is de-robed in public, fellow masked spirits must quickly gather around it and use themselves to protect its nudity from the glaring eyes of the public while leading it out of sight. Protecting its nakedness is about retaining the moral universe of the people who have accepted the masked one as the spirit of their dead ancestor. By stepping up, the Ooni similarly used his moral legitimacy to re-dress an elderly man, a legal institution in himself, who got into a demystifying fight and for whom this face-saving closure was necessary.

That conclusion would have been satisfactory if the matter was just about a contest of wills between the two leading actors. When you really look at it, Babalola was not the only egungun in this dance. The other one is his co-accused, the Supreme Court. By leaving the serious accusation against judges unaddressed, the institution remains exposed to the harsh weather elements of public distrust. Are there ethics, values, and legitimacies composed in our traditional institutions that can be called upon to similarly re-dress the Supreme Court’s demystification? The easiest answer, of course, is to quickly point out that Ooni’s moral jurisdiction does not extend to those modern institutions. It should not be his duty to salvage the face of an institution that has fallen into serial disrepute.

But the question subsists, what of the Supreme Court? Is there still anything left of the supremacy of its ethos that maintains its qualifications to dispense justice to the rest of society? Someone described the resolution as “the best of Yoruba jurisprudence” and it is striking how our people are quick to tout the supremacy of native resolution when what is at stake is the ideals of modern society. This was not merely about a clash between an elder and a stubborn younger man who can be patronisingly “forgiven” but justice as a condition for the continued existence of Nigeria. Babalola pointed out that Farotimi also “attacked” Supreme Court judges, but that is not accurate. The Supreme Court’s systematic self-demystification has been unfurling for years, one election petition at a time.

One of my disappointments with the unfolding of the case was how even the media managed to reduce it to a clash between two men. That failure to look beyond personalities blinded many commenters to the point they reduced the issue to either their annoyance at the disrespect of calling out an elder or mere legal technicalities. If this was about establishing the truth of what went down in the case in contention, this would have been a civil—not criminal—case. Farotimi would not be locked up at the behest of Babalola but given an adequate chance to subpoena those Supreme Court judges he accused of complicity, and they would be compelled to explain the magic by which “10” became “254”.

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If the case had been allowed to proceed reasonably, it would have been one of the most interesting in the history of our society because we would be asking the judges who determine our lives to judge their own selves. It would have been a test of their virtues and ability to redeem an institution that is becoming a parody. Instead, what did we get? If Nigeria were a society where the truth matters, commentators on the case would not sit in their lazy chairs asking, “Can he even prove his accusations?” They would be invested in the search for the truth.

Unfortunately, our collective ethics have been so disintegrated that accusing the Supreme Court of corruption did not warrant that urgency to ascertain the truth. It got so bad that none of the television anchors who were dishing out hot takes while the case raged were curious enough to look for a copy of the disputed court judgment to at least offer an informed analysis. Their best effort in making public intervention was to bring in one lawyer after the other to rake over the dead leaves of wilted opinions about the letter of the law. Thank God for Dr Opeyemi Banwo who took the initiative to search for the original copy of the case and analyse it, showing that Farotimi was on to something with his accusations. If you did not read his article titled, The ‘10-Hectare-for-254-Hectare Mistake’ That Sparked the Mother of All Defamation Wars Between Dele Farotimi and Chief Afe Babalola, I urge you to do so.

In a society where people take themselves seriously, not only will the judges involved in this case be summoned to account for changing their judgment, but they will also face intense scrutiny. Every case they have previously determined will be re-examined in the light of the accusation that what they corrected could be more than a clerical error. Real journalists will examine their record of using the “slip rule correction” and debate our judiciary system. Instead, what did we get?

The fact that an individual in Nigeria gets to initiate a criminal case against a fellow Nigerian and then turns around to announce that he has dictated its withdrawal to the police only confirms Farotimi’s contention that some people in this county have an inordinate amount of power that allows them to abuse public institutions.

It was not enough that Babalola got what he wanted, he also had to heighten the drama by reeling out the names of the big people whose solicitations he had previously refused. Of course, he would not have been a successful lawyer if he did not know the value of a good drama. He entertained the audience with several instances of his virtues such as that one time he turned down an offer of an oil block because “the money was too much” and he was already struggling under the weight of what he had already acquired. It was far more interesting that his rejection of that oil block was not because he thought the offer was morally wrong. I wished he mentioned the name of the person who offered him that oil block.

In any case, after spicing things up with a narration of Yoruba history and the necessary valorisation of tradition, he eventually gave in just at the point the occasion hit the climax. Everything ended there, including the gràgrà of the ideologically compromised police who pretended there was nothing to their interest in this matter other than running the errand of the rich and the powerful. In the hands of a seasoned dramatist like Ola Rotimi, the whole affair would have been written into an elegant satire.

Culled from The Punch