Amazon has listed Dele Farotimi’s ‘Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System’ as its number one bestseller in global politics after its author was arrested by police in Lagos on Tuesday.
The book surged to the first position on Amazon Thursday morning, after trending starting Wednesday afternoon.
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The demand for Mr. Farotimi’s on global platforms like Amazon followed a similar rush to bookstores across Nigeria, where citizens were curious to learn its content. The global interest followed Mr. Farotimi’s arrest. Nigerian-themed books rarely make Amazon’s bestselling chart, and Mr. Farotimi’s book beat globally acclaimed works like ‘Why Nations Fail’.
Mr. Farotimi, a retired lawyer based in Lagos, used the book to criticise corruption in the Nigerian judiciary and specifically namechecked a legal icon, Mr. Afe Babalola, as one of the top offenders.
Mr. Babalola “compromised the Supreme Court and the remaining semblance of integrity it might have had,” Mr. Farotimi wrote while narrating a case in which the nonagenarian lawyer approached “the Supreme Court and got that court to swim in the sewer of corruption and shameful self-abnegation.”
The book, published in July 2024, buttressed a longstanding public suspicion that Mr. Babalola was among those befouling the Nigerian judiciary by corrupting judges with cash and material bribes to influence judges from lower courts to the Supreme Court.
The book saw low sales following its publication until Mr. Farotimi was seized by armed policemen in Lagos on Tuesday morning and subsequently transported to Ado Ekiti, about 300 kilometres northeast of the nation’s commercial capital, where Mr. Babalola is best known as the largest employer of labour.
Following his initial arraignment on Wednesday morning in Ekiti, a judge remanded Mr. Farotimi in custody pending a bail hearing on December 10. The police said the book “was likely to cause fear and alarm to the public or disturb the public peace.”
The detention has sparked public outrage, with Nigerians demanding Mr. Farotimi’s release.