On September 5, 2009, Chief Gani Oyesola Fawehinmi, SAN, died at 71 at his Ikeja home in Lagos after a long battle with lung cancer.
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua called him “a colossus and an embodiment of truth, justice and the rule of law.” The Nigerian Bar Association described him as “the conscience of the nation.”
Fawehinmi, who was born April 22, 1938 in Ondo State, was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1965 after studying law in London.
In his practice of over four decades, he filed more than 20,000 cases and was detained several times by military regimes for defending civil liberties.
He founded the National Conscience Party and ran for president in 2003. He was also publisher of The Nigerian Weekly Law Reports.
“Gani lived for the common man,” said Femi Falana, SAN, his protégé. “He never compromised. Even in sickness, he was writing and speaking about justice.”
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka remembered him as “an irrepressible fighter for freedom.”
He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Ganiyat Fawehinmi, and five children.
