Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Gani Fawehinmi
1938 – 2009
The people's lawyer, who sued the state for thirty years
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Nigeria Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He spent three decades taking Nigerian governments to court on behalf of people who could not pay him, and was arrested, detained and had his passport seized again and again for it.
Abdul-Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi was the son of a Yoruba businessman in Ondo, put himself through law school in London by working as a labourer and a night porter, and came home in 1965 to a practice he then spent his life using against the state.
He took cases for people who could not pay: students shot by police, detainees held without charge, the families of the disappeared. He challenged decree after decree of successive military governments, most of which had clauses purporting to oust the jurisdiction of the courts entirely, and he kept filing anyway. He was arrested more than thirty times, detained without trial repeatedly, had his passport seized, his chambers raided, his law books confiscated and his licence to practise suspended.
He compiled the Nigerian Weekly Law Reports because the state was not publishing judgments reliably, founded a newspaper and a political party, and gave scholarships to hundreds of students. His most public fight was over the annulled 1993 election and the detention and death of Moshood Abiola.
He was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for human rights, and turned down a national honour from the Nigerian government. He died of cancer in 2009 and was declared a Senior Advocate of the Masses, a title the bar invented because he had refused the ordinary one for years on the grounds of how it was awarded.
He took cases for people who could not pay: students shot by police, detainees held without charge, the families of the disappeared. He challenged decree after decree of successive military governments, most of which had clauses purporting to oust the jurisdiction of the courts entirely, and he kept filing anyway. He was arrested more than thirty times, detained without trial repeatedly, had his passport seized, his chambers raided, his law books confiscated and his licence to practise suspended.
He compiled the Nigerian Weekly Law Reports because the state was not publishing judgments reliably, founded a newspaper and a political party, and gave scholarships to hundreds of students. His most public fight was over the annulled 1993 election and the detention and death of Moshood Abiola.
He was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for human rights, and turned down a national honour from the Nigerian government. He died of cancer in 2009 and was declared a Senior Advocate of the Masses, a title the bar invented because he had refused the ordinary one for years on the grounds of how it was awarded.
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