Chief Victor Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode, Q.C., SAN, CON (1921–1995) was a leading Nigerian politician, aristocrat, nationalist, statesman and lawyer. He was elected deputy premier of the Western Region of Nigeria in 1963 and he played a major role in Nigeria's legal history and politics from the late 1940s until 1995.
Family background and role in national history
Fani-Kayode hailed from a prominent and well educated Yoruba family of Ife, stock from south-western Nigeria. His grandfather, the Rev. Emmanuel Adedapo Kayode, was an Anglican Priest, who had got his Master of Arts degree from Fourah Bay College, which at that time was part of Durham University. This happened in 1885. His father, Victor Adedapo Kayode, studied law and graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge in 192. He was called to the Middle Temple in 1922, and went on to become a prominent lawyer and then judge, in Nigeria. His mother was Mrs. Aurora Kayode, née Fanimokun, who was the daughter of the respected Rev. Joseph Fanimokun, also an Anglican priest. He had also got his Master of Arts degree from Fourah Bay College and later went on to become the principal of the famous CMS Grammar School in Lagos, serving from 1896 to 1914. This was a missionary school that was founded by Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther.
In July 1958, he successfully moved the motion for Nigeria's independence in the Federal House of Assembly in Lagos. He argued that independence should take place on 2 April 1960 (the minutes of Hansard, 1958; Richard Sklar's "Nigeria's political parties:Power in an Emergent African Nation", World Press, p. 269; p. 269; Professor Onabamiro's "Glimpses in Nigeria's History", p. 140). In 1959, there was a further motion that was moved in the Nigerian Parliament, asking for a slight amendment to the Fani-Kayode motion of July, 1958. This new motion, which was moved by Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, asked that the 2nd April, 1960 date for independence, which had already been accepted and approved by Parliament and which had been acquiesced to by the British colonial authorities, should be shifted from the 2nd of April of that year to the 1st of October instead. This motion of amendment was subsequently passed and approved by the Parliament and it was also acquiesced to by the British. That was how the date for Nigeria's independence, 1 October 1960, was finally arrived at.
Education and professional life
After the completion of his study at King's College, Lagos, Remilekun Fani-Kayode went to Downing College at the University of Cambridge, in 1941. He did the British Bar examinations and came top in his year for the whole of the British Commonwealth. He was called to The British Bar at the Middle Temple in 1945, and went on to be appointed Queen's Counsel in 1960 (he was the third and youngest Nigerian ever to be made Q.C). Later, he was made a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 1977 (he was the third Nigerian to be made a SAN).
He set up the first indigenous Nigerian law firm in 1948, with Chief Frederick Rotimi Williams and Chief Bode Thomas, two lawyers, who had been trained at Cambridge and London University, respectively. The law firm they formed was called "Thomas, Williams and Kayode". In 1970, he established another law firm called "Fani-Kayode and Sowemimo" with his old friend, Chief Sobo Sowemimo S.A.N.
Political career
Chief Remilekun Fani-Kayode played a major role in the struggle for Nigeria's Independence. In 1952, together with Rotimi Williams, Bode Thomas and a number of others, he was detained by the British colonial authorities for the active and passionate roles played in the struggle against the British. He was elected the leader of the Action Group youth wing in 1954. He set up a youth wing for the party, who wore "black shirts" and used the "mosquito" as their emblem to reflect their disdain for British colonial rule.
Again, in 1954, Oloye Fani-Kayode was elected into the Federal House of Assembly on the platform of Chief Obafemi Awolowo's Action Group, and he continued his fight for Nigeria's Independence from there. He was the Assistant Federal Secretary of the Action Group and in that respect, he played a pivotal role, with the Federal Secretary, Chief Ayo Rosiji, in the organisation and administration of the Action Group. He, alongside Chief Awolowo, S. O. Ighodaro, E. O. Eyo, Adeyemi Lawson and S. G. Ikoku, represented the Action Group at the 1957 London Constitutional Conference.