Ladipo Solanke

Felix Ladipo Solanke was born around 1886 in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Educated at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, he travelled to Britain in 1922 to read law at University College London, being called to the Bar at the Inner Temple. Deeply disturbed by racism and colonial condescension in Britain, he resolved to unite West African scholars studying abroad.

On August 7, 1925, alongside Amy Ashwood Garvey and colleagues from Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Gambia, Solanke founded the West African Students' Union (WASU). As its honorary secretary and warden of the Africa Hostel in Camden, he created a vital incubator for anti-colonial thought that trained Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, H.O. Davies, and Obafemi Awolowo. His 1927 pamphlet United West Africa at the Bar of the Family of Nations demanded immediate self-governance.