You were bundled to Ekiti like a felon only to be charged with a misdemeanour. A man shouldn’t smash a fly with a hammer if it’s perched on his scrotum. Perhaps the Aare doesn’t remember our ancestors warned that people who go about chasing little chicks make themselves vulnerable to a fall. However, Dele, it’s good to wash the left hand while washing the right. So, please permit me to remind you that a person who never submits often submits to the funeral mat. I haven’t mentioned Abiola because he died for our freedom. Nevertheless, if you die for the truth, you die well. 

Brother Dele, a courageous man, is not a reckless man. When you got to Ekiti, couldn’t you have feigned brokenness? As Dino Melaye might have done. Seeing no tears in your eyes, they felt compelled to tighten the screw with many more misdemeanours. Your fans say you are a Prophet and that it has only taken a slight wind to expose the ugly underbelly of the fowl. Why are you and your fans like this? Bola Ige was also an orator, yet he never broke the calabash of an elder. If justice in Nigeria has gone criminal, must you break your head to salvage it? Did Baba snatch your wife? Haven’t you seen what the lord has used him to do in Ekiti? And don’t tell me that Escobar was also a notice-me philanthropist. Aare is a legal luminary. 

You know the police are your friends, that theft in your office notwithstanding. So, why couldn’t you contrive anguish and remorse and spare them the comparison to people futilely trying to shake an Iroko?  Remember, if a child being flogged by his father stands gidigba like a stone, nonchalant in pouring rain, he will get more strokes and perhaps a punch in the face. Your visible imperturbability can’t benefit an angry man’s health.  Remember, you are a learned gentleman, not a street fighter. Any other gentleman so comprehensively maltreated would have succumbed to sing a tearful apology, grovel at the Aare’s feet, and set the police free to attend to Christmas ‘wetin you carry’. Farotimi, you know that a man holding another man down in the mud is in the mud himself. You can’t let our esteemed Baba suffer this. Do you see why I think it’s you who can set the chief free? 

For twenty days, the magistrate didn’t grant you bail. And you neither flinched nor buckled. Is that normal? Weren’t you supposed to have become perplexed and flustered and then, sober and sensible enough to realise that a vague apology to a 93-year-old in our culture, under the circumstances,  isn’t necessarily a capitulation or self-repudiation but courtesy? Though you had addressed a conference before your arrest to warn us of an imminent rhapsody of absurdities, isn’t there a way you can soften up to patch things up: to say you were misled or something as ambiguous? The Bulabas, as you call them, who have been baying for your blood, might call you a liar for two months and, by March next year, move onto other more salacious things or dive into ‘Ebin pawa o’ part two. 

But  I always feel for you. Even in a plantain republic, where monkeys and baboons dominate the corridors of power,  wouldn’t a lawyer accused of a misdemeanour be granted immediate bail on self-recognizance by a magistrate court? Haba, if a woman has accused her mother-in-law of witchcraft, shouldn’t the mother-in-law know she can’t bring a witch to prove her innocence and punish her insolent daughter-in-law? Somebody said you should have courted the court. I don’t know how that works in Ekiti. The courts indeed have the discretion on bail, but what’s a court without good faith? You are a philosopher. What can make an honorable magistrate exercise judicial discretion like a Portable zazzooing about in the temple of ikwokirikwo? 

Before I forget. Did you have a scuffle with the police? They brought you to the federal high court in handcuffs. At first, the cuffs looked like silver bracelets. If you weren’t a pain in the butt, why didn’t you make a public fuss of it? Why did you make the police look stupid by looking so untroubled, so accustomed to chains? You marched like a Wole Soyinka’s Abiku snorting, “In vain are your bangles cast. I’m Dele Farotimi, coming for the first and possibly repeated times like Gani Fawehinmi. I’m the squirrel’s teeth out to crack the nutty riddle of the criminal justice system. “ Anyway, I don’t believe they used the chains to please the chief Afe Babalola. He is not a barbarian. At 93, he won’t derive any childish pleasure from seeing any man, let alone a learned colleague accused of a misdemeanour in shackles. Baba is a human rights champion.  He knows that such an Idi Amin’s high-handedness won’t also help him in the court of public opinion where defamation is ultimately adjudicated. 

Dele, sequestered men are often thirsty for gossip. So let me indulge you a bit. Kashima Shettima took his ice cream jokes to Kemi Badenoch. Shettima told Mrs Badenoch to drop Kemi from her name since she had become a Nigeria hater. Trust an  African woman with a British accent and her sassiness. She said something like, “What’s my own with you? Olukemi is a Yoruba name. I’m Yoruba and British. Abeg fi mi sile jo. You and who? Go to Timbuktu with your Boko haram.” The woman must have been a colonial master in her previous life. She said the Nigerian police stole her brother’s shoes—the kind of thing your secretary might say of her phone in the future. Dele, you must have heard that your book is selling like mad. You must have also heard it has been banned. So, it might soon flood traffic snarls. Anyway, since the aim was to shake and shatter the crooked table of the justice system, the actual losers will be the autistic children to whom you dedicated the sales proceeds. 

Ehen Dele,  one crucial thing. Many who have read it said you didn’t put much evidence in the book. Some said you were doomed because nothing in the book could substantiate the accusations. But your fans are not that pessimistic. They say you must be hiding something you plan to unleash, like David’s sling, when the matter starts in court. Could that be the reason you have been dragged to a thousand courts? Do you think they want to make it impossible to unleash a legal catapult? Some of your learned colleagues have said you allowed your ego to drive you to illogical, insupportable, and damaging conclusions in the book. They are distraught that a lawyer could choose to be that delinquent by tarnishing the reputation of a respected senior colleague with malicious conjectures. They argued that a truth that can’t proved shouldn’t be peddled about as a fact, especially if it could harm a reputation and invite repercussions. The criminal justice system is rotten.  But as a  practising Christian, your actions must pass the strictest test of truth, love, peace and Godliness. And if after  searching  your heart, if you find peace, then by all means, ‘no gree for anybody’.  

The Aare appears eager to accept your apology and let bygones be bygones. His lawyers said he only wanted to protect his name. From a rational perspective, only a full-throated recant and an apology can wipe away this stain. Peter Obi has done what he ought to do for two friends in locked horns. To beg both sides to sheath their swords, swallow their pride, lick their wounds and find peace. Rightly, he had to start with the aggrieved older man. But Dele, do you think Peter Obi’s foray put you in greater jeopardy, as Sowore suggested? After his apparently failed intervention, it appears your status has changed to POW. The arrows are coming from all directions. 

Dele, I have emptied my mouth. Our ancestors said, “If truth vanishes, the world will perish”. If you have a speck of doubt in your conviction,  please tender an apology. Apology at this stage will stink to the heavens. Still, the Bible says, “Pursue peace with all men. as much as you can.” The Bible says, “Don’t bear false witness against your neighbour.”  The Bible, in Matthew 5:25, admonishes, “Settle quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on your way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge,  and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.” 

But Dele, if you have told the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then kwechiri. Because the Bible says, “The truth shall set you free.” If not here, then in the great beyond. A man lives once and after that judgment. Though nothing under the sun is ultimately hidden, some truths can never be proven. Yet when the proof is unattainable, it must be declared.  Sometimes, it’s better to bite the bullet and go to prison than tender a truth-defeating apology and live forever after like a night soil man. If an apology doesn’t carry the burden of establishing the truth of this matter, it could be worse than leprosy. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stood their ground, faced the furnace and triumphed. Is Dele a Daniel or Judas?

Dele Farotimi, the Lord is  strength of the righteous.