A Senior Advocate of Nigeria and the Vice Presidential aspirant of the All Progressive Congress for the 2015 elections, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has been listed by City Lawyer Magazine as one of Nigeria’s Top 100 Lawyers in the first-ever industry-wide ranking of Nigeria’s pre-eminent lawyers.
Reports say he received some of the highest nominations from peers.
Here is a profile of Prof. Osinbajo as published by City Lawyer Magazine’s compilation of “Nigeria’s Top 100 Lawyers”:
Professor Yemi Osinbajo, SAN received a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Lagos in 1978 and was admitted to the Nigerian Bar in 1979. He again received a Master of Laws degree from the London School of Economics in 1980. A professor of law, Osinbajo is often celebrated as a former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of Lagos State, given his landmark and game-changing reforms.
Prior to his service to the Lagos State Government, Osinbajo was Head of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos and Special Adviser to Nigeria’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice between 1988 and 1992. He has over 31 years of litigation experience including significant trial and appellate work. A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Osinbajo is presently the Senior Partner at Simmons Cooper Partners, a leading commercial litigation and corporate commercial firm with a multi-jurisdictional competence spanning Nigeria, the United States and the United Kingdom.
He has conducted crucial constitutional and precedent-setting cases before the Nigerian Supreme Court. Some of these include fiscal disputes between the federating units and the federal government; disputes regarding the ownership and control of oil and gas resources; town and physical planning disputes between the federating units and the federal government; an international territorial jurisdictional dispute in the West African sub-regional court; shareholder disputes involving a multinational company, private investors and state-owned investment corporations, and energy disputes arising from multinational participation in power projects in Nigeria.
A member of the International Bar Association and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Osinbajo has served in Nigeria’s Body of Benchers and Council for Legal Education. He is currently an independent Director of CitiBank Nigeria and an Ethics Adviser to the board of the Africa Development Bank. He has also served in various capacities within the United Nations including serving as a staff member and Member of the UN Secretary General’s Committee of Experts on Conduct and Discipline of UN peacekeeping personnel.
Osinbajo is Co-founder & Board Member of the Convention on Business Integrity and the Justice Research Institute Ltd. In 2007, he co-founded with his wife Oludolapo, “The Orderly Society Trust”, a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting good governance among other objects. He is a lucid author and much sought after speaker both locally and internationally. He is actively involved in the pursuit of legal education and justice sector reform in Nigeria, and is Pastor at the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Olive Tree Parish, Banana Island.
In honour of his contributions to legal reform and development, a compendium of essays on Nigerian constitutional law was compiled.
