Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Louis Mbanefo
Summary
Sir Louis Nwachukwu Mbanefo (13 May 1911 – 28 March 1977) is noted as the first lawyer from the East of Nigeria. He was born in Onitsha, Eastern Nigeria, and obtained his education in the United Kingdom at a time when it was extremely rare to have a person of his ethnic persuasion pursuing higher education, much less professional training at the bar.
Between 1925 and 1932 he attended the Methodist Boys High School in Lagos and subsequently the prestigious King's College, also in Lagos, which was modelled on Eton and Harrow, and where he was a keen cricketer and footballer. He was later admitted to University College London, where he studied law, graduating with Upper Second Class Honours in 1935. He was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, shortly after graduating from university. He was then admitted to King's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a further degree in history in 1937.
Mbanefo returned home to Nigeria and set up practice in his hometown of Onitsha, the first recorded lawyer in the area. By virtue of this status, he developed an incredibly successful practice, with clientele largely sourced from his kinsmen who were an extremely resourceful breed of wealthy traders and also as a result of the frequent land disputes arising as a matter of course in the territory. It is reputed that while such disputes had previously been settled by Tribal warfare, they were now being resolved in the arena of the Law Courts by an indigenous and competent gladiator – as Mbanefo undoubtedly was. He became an invaluable asset in the new dispensation. His practice covered a huge area, basically the East and North of the country. He made several notable appearances in landmark cases before the Regional Court, Supreme Court and West African Court of Appeal, reports of appearances before the Privy council are as yet unconfirmed.
Mbanefo later entered politics and was elected into the Eastern Region Parliament in 1950, where he distinguished himself as an excellent orator and lawmaker.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.