Documents expose how Afe Babalola bribed 5 Court of Appeal judges $1.125m to buy Adamawa guber judgment
The ongoing face-off between human rights activist and lawyer, Dele Farotimi and 95-year-old Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Afe Babalola has rekindled attention on past allegations of judicial manipulation involving Babalola’s chambers.
The controversy brings to the fore, a 2004 diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Abuja, released by WikiLeaks, which alleged that Afe Babalola & Co played a major role in influencing a gubernatorial election tribunal ruling in Plateau State in favor of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s political interests.
According to WikiLeaks, Afe Babalola spent over $1.125 million on five judges who sat at the Court of Appeal in the early 2000s to procure a favourable judgement for his client, then Adamawa Governor Boni Haruna.
Mr Babalola bribed a panel of five appellate judges headed by Justice Pius Olayiwola Aderemi with $225,000 each to restore Mr Haruna to office after an election petitions tribunal sacked him on grounds of electoral malpractice.
The document quoted a senior lawyer’s account of how he followed Mr Babalola to deliver tens of millions of naira to appellate jurists to purchase their preferred ruling.
Mr. Babalola had a reputation for winning his cases in his practising years.
This trait made him to become a sought after lawyer by highly placed individuals in Nigeria.
But a lawyer on Mr Babalola’s team told the U.S. government that the senior advocate won the controversial matter with cash and that he was among the persons who carried N30 million untraceable bank notes to bribe the justices at Mr Babalola’s behest.
U.S. diplomats were worried by the glaring disparity between the tribunal ruling that voided Mr Haruna’s victory and the decision of the Court of Appeal that restored him to office.
“The verdicts of the appeals court and the election tribunal differed so significantly on their findings of the relevant facts that they beg the question of whether one verdict or the other may have been ‘influenced’ by outside parties,” the foreign cable said.
The witness stated that buying judgements “was the normal procedure” for such important cases, which confirmed the diplomats’ suspicions that the verdict that reinstated Mr Haruna’s gubernatorial victory cost N30 million.
“According to an attorney for Haruna, the outcome was ensured in typical Nigerian fashion: with cash,” stated the leaked U.S. government cable. “The attorney, who works for Presidential attorney Afe Babalola, said that when President Obasanjo sent Babalola to take over the appeal, he also sent cash to be used for the appeal.”
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Mr Haruna was among the first governors to be charged with corruption by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after leaving office in 2008.
Chief Babalola is yet to comment on the content of the classified U.S. cable.
Meanwhile, the Wikileaks documents have shattered hopes that Mr Babalola might have had to defend himself against corruption allegations raised by rights lawyer Dele Farotimi, 56, who, in his book, accused the senior advocate of buying verdicts with cash rather than merit-based arguments.
Not only did Mr Babalola deploy the police to batter and arrest Mr Farotimi on December 3 over a defamation allegation, the rights lawyer was also transported from Lagos to Ekiti where the nonagenarian wields significant influence on a five-hour road trip.
The controversy trailing the book, which initially saw low sales after its release in July, has made it a bestseller on Amazon within three days of its author’s incarceration as curious Nigerians besieged the site with orders to read the damning accusations of corruption levelled against Mr Babalola.
The book has also sold out in popular stores like Tinu-Ade Bookshop in Ibadan and VIC Bookstore in Abuja, where Nigerians have trooped to purchase it.
The author’s supporters planned to stage protests across several locations in Abuja, Lagos, Ekiti and the King’s College London, which received a £10 million donation from Mr Babalola in 2023.
The demonstrations aim to draw attention to the precarious state of freedom in Nigeria under President Bola Tinubu’s watch.
Peoples Gazzet/ NewsBand
