Adetokunbo Ademola was appointed as Chief Justice on 1 April 1958, succeeding Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton, who was retiring.
17 Facts About Adetokunbo Ademola
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Adetokunbo Ademola was the first chancellor of the University of Benin.
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Adetokunbo Ademola's father was a regent of the Egba United Government in Lagos who later became Ademola II, the Alake of Egbaland, Abeokuta, a historic walled city of the Egbas in south-western Nigeria.
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Adetokunbo Ademola's mother was a senior sister to Sir Adeyemo Alakija.
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Adetokunbo Ademola moved back to Lagos when he was eight to live with his mother in the family compound on Broad St, and subsequently continued his education at Holy Cross School, Lagos.
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Adetokunbo Ademola finished his secondary education in 1925 and passed the Senior Clerical Examination for admission into the colonial Civil Service.
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Adetokunbo Ademola gained appointment as a clerk in the Chief Secretary's office of the National Secretariat, Lagos.
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From 1928 to 1931, Adetokunbo Ademola studied law at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.
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Adetokunbo Ademola was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in London in 1934.
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Adetokunbo Ademola then joined the unified Nigerian administrative service and for a year, he was posted to Enugu as assistant secretary at the southern secretariat, Eastern Nigeria.
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Adetokunbo Ademola left the service and started a private practice from 1936 until 1939, when he was appointed Magistrate of the Protectorate Court.
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In 1955, a year before Western Nigeria became internally self-governing, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola was appointed Chief Justice for Western Nigeria, thus becoming the first Nigerian head of the judiciary anywhere in the country.
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Adetokunbo Ademola later went on to play a calming role in the aftermath of the 1966 coup when some northern officers wanted to secede from the country.
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Adetokunbo Ademola was involved in various constitutional cases during the period.
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Adetokunbo Ademola was a prince of the Yoruba people, and thus often made use of the pre-nominal honorific Omoba.
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Adetokunbo Ademola was first knighted in January 1957, and then in 1963 was appointed a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom as well as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, all by Queen Elizabeth II during the time Nigeria was a British protectorate and later a Commonwealth realm.
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Adetokunbo Ademola married Kofo Moore, who obtained a BA at Oxford and who was a daughter of the late Eric Moore, first Lagos member of the United Nations committee of experts advising on labor conventions and regulations.