The 'On Becoming' Accusation That Cost Toke Makinwa N1,000,000.

Words are powerful.

This is never more true than when a person decides to write a book and put a piece of their life into black and white that lives forever, especially on a large scale.

When OAP and vlogger, Toke Makinwa’s tell-all memoir, “On Becoming” hit the shelves in 2016, Toke Makinwa referred to it as a “must-tell” – an accurate representation of her life and the hardships she endured from her parent’s death to her very publicized breakup with her ex-husband, Maje Ayida.

The book was well received by fans and critics alike. Everybody was smiling. Except Maje.

The estranged husband of the very popular OAP accused Toke Makinwa of writing defamatory content in her memoir and promised to take legal action against her. Well, turns out Maje isn’t all bark and no bite. The fitness entrepreneur filed the lawsuit marked ID/ADR/820/2017 through his counsel Kemi Pinheiro SAN leading Adetokunbo Davies.

Below is not only the outcome of the court case but also more interestingly, the exact line of content that made Maje win the case.

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During the court proceedings, Maje insisted that his ex-wife Toke was obsessed with social media and fame and had made several defamatory statements on several pages of her book, including but not limited to pages 44, 48, 52, 54, 63, 64, 82, 83, 92 and 128.

He further told the court that he was a prominent and reputable businessman from a well-respected family who works within the Health and Wellness Industry, as well as a columnist in the two most widely read newspapers in Nigeria. He said that the defendants (Toke and her publisher, Kachifo Publishing) published the words in the book “knowing they were false having calculated that the benefit to them would outweigh any compensatory damages the Claimant may be entitled to and by reason of which the Claimant is entitled to aggravated damages.”

He further said that the defendants “willfully and maliciously” proceeded to “wickedly and falsely portray” him as a person of undesirable and questionable character, claiming that his “hard-earned reputation” had been seriously damaged. Maje said that the book has elicited a number of hurtful comments from members of the public across social media platforms and provided some comments as proof of this in the court.

Upon hearing the case and reviewing the evidence, Justice Olukayode Ogunjobi of a Lagos High Court sitting at the Tafawa Balewa Square on November 12th ordered Toke Makinwa to pay her ex-husband the sum of ONE MILLION NAIRA for defamation.

Justice Ogunjobi said: “after a careful consideration of the evidence before the court, it found only the contents of page 54 line 11-16 and page 83, Line 1 of the 1st defendants book as defamatory.”

This is the part we all came for:

What is in those portions of the book?

Well, here it is.

In the first part, Page 54, line 11-16, the book reads:

I put Maje’s phone right back where I found it and we had breakfast like nothing had happened. He dropped me off but asked if I had two thousand naira, he wanted to leave it at the gate for his cousin who was visiting. I gave him the money. I stupidly paid for Anita’s transport and I couldn’t speak up. I was in shock. Slowly, I had become a shadow of the confident girl I used to be.

There was no way to prove that Toke actually gave Maje N2,000 for Anita’s transport or to prove that this actually happened.

The second portion Page 83, line 1 reads:

He had given me an STI in the past. He’d returned from a trip once and we had sex, and a few days later I was itching.

There was no evidence to authenticate the above as true as well and as you can imagine, saying that a person gave you an STI is a really serious dent on their character.

As a result of these, the Court awarded N500,000 as damages against each of the 1st and 2nd defendants to any charity organization of Maje’s choosing. The court further granted an injunction preventing Toke and Kachifo from producing copies of the book with the defamatory words in pages 54 and 83. Finally, Justice Ogunjobi gave the defendants 30 days from its judgment to delete and remove said defamatory words from unsold copies of the book.

Wow! All this drama. Isn’t it so funny though that a story about Maje asking Toke for N2,000 ultimately made Toke pay him 500 times that in court? This life!

That’s All.

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