EDITORIAL: Itunu Babalola Was A Victim Of A Broken System, But Not Ours – EKO HOT BLOG Perspective

• EKO HOT BLOG perspective on the unfortunate death of Itunu Babalola Nigerian woman wrongfully incarcerated in Cote D’Ivoire.

On Monday, November 15, 2021, various media were saturated with the news of Itunu Babalola, a 22-year-old Nigerian woman who was wrongfully incarcerated in Cote D’Ivoire but died in detention after battling a diabetes-related complication.

It is understood that a former prosecutor for the state of Abidjan, in collaboration with the local police authorities had twisted the case and accused Itunu Babalola of human trafficking which led to her conviction for 20 years. Although the sentence was reduced to 10 years, Itunu, before her death had spent two years in an Ivorian prison for a crime she did not commit.

Read Also: Nigerian Lady, Itunu Wrongfully Convicted in Cote D’ivoire Dies in Prison

Consequently, the Nigerians in the diaspora commission (NiDCOM), a Commission set up by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to foster a more responsive engagement with Nigerians living abroad had conducted a thorough and painstaking investigation into the events that led to Babalola’s incarceration and concluded that she had been unfairly tried and put behind bars for a crime she did not commit.

Itunu Babalola whose family is from Oyo State, Nigeria has been living in Bondoukou, Cote D’Ivoire for a long time got entangled in a legal battle when she reported the burglary of her house to the Police.

Following her conviction, desperate efforts had been made by the Nigerian Commission in Abidjan as well as the Nigerians in the Diaspora Commission to secure her bail, but the prosecutor said it is only the court that could grant her bail since she has already been convicted.

NiDCOM Chairman, Hon Abike Dabiri-Erewa Breaks Silence On Death Of Nigerian In Cote D’ivoire

In a Press Release issued in March 2021, NiDCOM Chairman, Hon Abike Dabiri-Erewa had said that plans have been put in motion to engage the services of a legal expert to prove the innocence of Itunu Babalola at the Court of Appeal after the accused had spent two years out of a ten-year jail term for an offence she did not commit.

According to the new prosecutor assigned to the case, substantive evidence that had emerged meant that a fair and unbiased review and retrial of the case would culminate in the release of Itunu Babalola.

However, as is the case with many Nigerians in not just Ivorian prisons but in many other parts of the world, the wheel of justice did not spin in Babalola’s favour.

Due to the failure of the public defense system in the West African country, several efforts to expedite a re-trial for Babalola proved abortive. Having been convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction, the chances of stitching together an appeal within a condensed time frame was essentially slim to non-existent. Time was going to her only salvation; and, unfortunately, she did not have enough of it.

However one chooses to parse it, the Itunu Babalola story is, without doubt, a tragic one. What started out as a simple recourse to the law by reporting a burglary incident at her residence consequently resulted in being accused of bogus trafficking charges, which ultimately led to her conviction.

It is important to note that this ordeal occurred in a foreign country with an independent justice system with a track record of railroading foreign nationals into harsh prison sentences, sometimes for the most frivolous of crimes.

From a critical perspective, one cannot help but speculate that the case against her may have been more political than legal. The Ivorian Government of course stood to gain nothing by prosecuting an average Nigerian citizen like Babalola, but knew that her conviction would nonetheless raise eyebrows with the Nigerian authorities; and, if history teaches us anything, is that cases like this could sometimes be used as leverage to strongarm foreign governments to cede ground on certain political standoffs. At worst, the Ivorians would have been hoping to at least milk this human tragedy for political gain by saving it as a chit down the road.

The inevitable ambiguities, as well as the procedural maneuvres that characterised the case, meant that Babalola’s release was never going to be a smooth sail. There was not a snowball’s chance in hell that Babalola was going to walk away from the chopping block without protracted political maneuvring which was going to take a significant length of time.

Yes, the Nigerian government has been culpable of not living up to expectation in certain instances, and Itunu Babalola’s untimely demise all but feels like one of those times again. However, the situation was a clear case of the Ivorians stabbing an ally in the back and placing many cones in the middle of the road to deny the same ally any feasible chance of scuttling to safety to cauterise the bleeding.

In the end, it was not the Nigerian government, nor NiDCOM who “pushed women and children aside just to get on a lifeboat.” It was not the Nigerian government who decided to milk human tragedy for political gain and it certainly wasn’t NiDCOM who chose to use a young woman who had left the shores of Nigeria to improve her estate in life to score political points, it was the Ivorian authorities, and that is where the blame needs to fall.

Again, Babalola’s case would not be the first time the Nigerian government was unable to save one of its own from the chopping block due to regrettable standards of a foreign justice system that made it almost impossible to circumvent these “procedural hoops.”

Between 2003-2007, the Nigerian government had similarly made frantic attempts to save a Nigerian citizen from the desperate claws of the Singaporean justice system, but failed, only this time, he did not die of a medical emergency like Babalola, he was executed in broad daylight with the whole world watching.

Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi was arrested on November 2, 2004, in Changi Airport, Singapore while in transit. Tochi was just 18 when he was arrested. According to his lawyer, he was looking to advance his football career abroad but was in possession of African herbs meant for a sick man — not diamorphine.

Security operatives at the airport became suspicious after discovering that he had spent more than 24 hours in transit. One hundred capsules of diamorphine were found on him, with a total weight of 727.02 grammes (a bit over a pound and a half). The substance was estimated by authorities to be worth S$1.5m (US$970,000).

But Tochi claimed that the capsules he carried were for a friend and insisted they were African herbs that tasted like chocolate. He swallowed a capsule to prove this, and police took him to a local hospital where he was given a laxative to flush the capsule out of his system.

As gathered, drug trafficking carries a mandatory death sentence under Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act, and despite pleas for clemency from Amnesty International, the United Nations, the then Nigeria President Olusegun Obasanjo, he was executed by hanging on January 26, 2007, in Changi Prison.

For three years, the then Olusegun Obasanjo administration, the United Nations and International Rights organisations rallied to save Tochi, but failed. So, if the government was not demonized for failing to pull what would obviously have been a rabbit out of a hat, why should NiDCOM be made to shoulder the responsibility of Babalola’s death when it had barely one year to prepare her defense, not to mention the fact that no one anticipated the eventuality of this lethal medical emergency.

Ultimately, the Itunu Babalola story is a cautionary tale for all of us, particularly for the Ivorian authorities. The one thing that could have saved her life was just simple humanity. Unfortunately, certain individuals decided to score political points with her tragedy. Once again, a productive member of society, a woman in her prime has fallen on the sword of “politics as usual” and it is time for those responsible for her premature demise to have a “come to Jesus” talk with themselves.

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