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| Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams |
Chief Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams (SAN) was born on
December 16, 1920, he was a prominent Nigerian lawyer and first Nigerian to
become a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. In the 1950s, he was a member of the
Action Group and subsequently became the minister for local government and
Justice. He was the president of the Nigerian Bar Association in 1959, the
association is the leading body for lawyers in the country. He left politics in
the 1960s, as a result of the political crisis in the Western Region of
Nigeria.
Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams
is a senior legal practitioner in Nigeria. An acclaimed constitutional lawyer,
he was the first Minister of Justice and Attorney General in the defunct
Western Nigeria and the first Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) in 1975.
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| Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams |
Chief F.R.A. Williams had his primary
education, first at the Baptist academy, Lagos from 1927 – 1928, and later at
the Methodist school, olowogbowo, Lagos from 1928 to 1933, from 1934 to 1938,
he attended CMS Grammar School, Lagos Chief Rotimi Williams could very well have
been an engineer because he was awarded full scholarship to study Mechanical
Engineering at the Yaba Higher College. However, he preferred to follow the
footsteps of his father and grand uncle in the legal profession. And so
in 1928, he was sent by his father to the United Kingdom where he was admitted
into Selwyn College University of Cambridge when in 1942 he graduated with the
Bachelor of Arts Honour Degree.
Between 1942 and 1943, Chief Williams studied
at the Grays Inn, London, where he qualified as Barrister-at-Law. He was
awarded the Master of Arts Degree of Cambridge University in 1946.
Meanwhile, in 1943, Chief Williams had enrolled as a Legal practitioner of the
Supreme Court of Nigeria, the only Nigeria among the six persons enrolled in
that year, the remaining five being British expatriates.
In 1943, he became the first Nigerian solicitor to the
Supreme Court of Nigeria and soon thereafter entered the political arena as a
member of the Nigerian Youth Movement. He rose to become the movement's general
secretary. However, the movement was soon embroiled in a crisis which dented
its political support among the Nigerian masses. When the movement began to
fade politically, he was one of the educated members of the Nigerian political
class who joined the Action Group. He was the group's legal adviser in the
early 1950s and was also a member of the Western region's privy council. He was
elected into the Lagos Town Council in 1953 and was subsequently made chairman
of the council. In 1957, he became the Western Region's Attorney General, the
first Nigerian to be an attorney general. He was made Queen's Counsel in 1958,
another first for him, as he was one of the first two Nigerians to be made one.
He set up the first indigenous Nigerian law firm in 1948
with Chief Remilekun Fani-Kayode and Chief Bode Thomas. The law firm was called
"Thomas, Williams and Kayode Between 1954 and 1957, Williams practised law, becoming
Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1958. Before then, he had gone into politics, in
deference to local pressure to continue the political vocation of his lawyer
friend and partner, Bode Thomas who died on November 20, 1953.
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| Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams |
In the same
year, Williams assumed membership of the Area Council. He became the first
chairman of the Lagos Town Council. He was also secretary of the Nigerian Youth
Movement. Following changes made in the Littleton Constitution, he was made the
Minister of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in 1954. The appointments
placed him in good stead within the Action Group and, at 33, he was already a
member of Chief Obafemi Awolowo's inner cabinet. At 37 years, he became the
first indigenous attorney general and minister of justice in the Western
Region. In 1960, he became the deputy premier of the region, acting as the
premier.
In October 18, 1975,
Rotimi Williams became the chairman of the Constitutional Drafting Committee.
The body was formed to present a draft constitution to be approved by the
military administration of Obasanjo. He led
the convention to present an agenda for broad coalition building across ethnic
and regional lines. The body pushed for presidential winners to have at least
25% of the total votes cast in two thirds of the nineteen states in Nigeria and
that each of the 19 states of the federation should have a minister
representing them. The political parties should
also have support in at least two thirds of the states. He died on march
26, 2005 (aged 84)
Reference
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