Award-winning Nigerian lawyer and entertainment business executive, Oyinkansola Fawehinmi, popularly known as Foza, has revealed how she and her team reviewed more than 5,000 tweets trolling and harassing popular singer and songwriter, Simi, wife of Afrobeats star Adekunle Gold.
Foza, who is part of Simi’s legal team, disclosed this while appearing as a guest on the JayOnairLive show.
“We went through over 5,000 tweets of sustained harassment. And the intention was to ensure that Simi becomes a shadow of herself,” she said.
Foza further discussed the prolonged harassment and bullying allegedly directed at Simi and Adekunle Gold, revealing what she described as coordinated attacks targeted at the singer during a sensitive stage of her pregnancy.
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“And mind you, I’m dealing with someone here that has a baby on the way. I’m not going to sit down and let you do that to my clients. Nobody, even you, if you had a wife that’s about to give birth, you’re not going to allow that to happen,” she said while speaking with the host of the show.
She also clarified the difference between defamation and harassment, arguing that repeated and coordinated online attacks, as well as threats to personal safety, go beyond simple defamatory statements and amount to criminal harassment with serious consequences.
“So now defamation is, I come out and say, hey, Jay did X and X and X on this thing. Defamation most of the time is like one or two statements that you make, you know. And for me, it’s like, hey, you have to prove that statement. Harassment is a sustained period of conversation.”
“But people need to understand that these are not just mere statements. They have real-life implications, especially on celebrities. When things like this break out, the first thing is all the brands you’re working with start calling you. You start having to explain yourself.”
Expressing concern over cyberbullying and online harassment in Nigeria’s entertainment industry, particularly on X and other social media platforms, Foza maintained that online bullies and trolls, whose harmful behaviour is amplified by anonymity and monetisation incentives online or physically, can pose serious threats.
