Pat UtomiI have not read Dele Farotimi’s book that seems to have stirred the hornet’s nest. Nor am I likely to read it soon. And this has nothing to do with how I feel about Dele or the subject he explored. With the line up of books I must read for my teaching, writing and critical professional development needs, including daily selection from different genres and disciplines for the general fecundity of the intellect, my situation is such that the curiosity to peruse the content can move the Dele book up the queue but not far up enough for the reading to happen soon.
So why do I consider the case so important. I follow trends and try to predict the consequences of these trends for human progress. This has produced the uncanny outcome of people exclaiming at untoward developments and calling me to say you predicted ten years ago that this will happen. The manner of the conduct of powerful elements and state actors on Dele Farotimi’s current travails are very deliberate and intentional with huge consequences for the rule of law and institutions building in Nigeria.
The unearthing of a crude colonial law to prosecute no matter the merits of the need to vitiate the weight of a defamation is to intimidate all who may want to express themselves. It may or may not be the prime purpose of those hunting Dele as game but the outcome is that. Yet it was a predictable outcome of patterns taking shape in our civilian ‘democracy’ in which judges have far less courage than they had under military rule. Read my book “Why Not” or just reflect on its subtitle: “Citizenship, State Capture, Creeping Fascism and the Criminal Hijack of Politics in Nigeria.”
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Handcuff Dele to humiliate him and put the fear of power in all who may dare to march to the drumbeats of the establishment. Somehow they forget how a man hung on the tree 2000 years ago and has shaped human history. Mandela from prison defined South Africa’s future; a Ghandi from being thrown out of a train in South Africa defeated the British in India without a bullet. But people forget too quickly and we are reminded by Santayana that those who ignore history repeat its errors.
If they do unto Dele as they desire, whether what he wrote offends terribly or not, what will happen soon is that most Governors will have courts to try anybody who dares hold an opinion different from theirs. The jails may be full soon.
Should I bother to quote again Reverend Martin Niemoller and others who warned we ask not for whom the bell tolls. You may be next. Dele today, maybe you tomorrow.
This is why people like Patrick Henry said give me Liberty or give me death. Freedom of expression has one elixir; the ability to air the alternative opinion. Give me sunlight or give me death. Criminal defamation is the tyrants tool and no democracy should have a place for it. We must now move to expunge it from our law books.
Pat Utomi, Professor of Political Economy and Entrepreneurship and Founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership.
