Gani Fawehinmi

Abdul-Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi was born on April 22, 1938, in Ondo City. He worked menial jobs in London to pay his tuition at the University of London, being called to the Nigerian Bar in 1965. Opening a law firm in Lagos, he dedicated his practice to pro-bono defense of oppressed citizens, student unionists, trade union leaders, and political dissidents.

Fawehinmi revolutionized legal scholarship in West Africa by founding the Nigerian Weekly Law Reports (NWLR) in 1985, providing judicial precedents across the country. Arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement over forty times by military regimes, he never surrendered his fearless crusade. Conferred with the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) rank in 2001 and awarded the Bernard Simons Memorial Award by the International Bar Association, he was universally revered as 'Senior Advocate of the Masses'.