Chief Richard Akinjide, Second Republic Attorney General and Minister of Justice is dead. He died on Tuesday morning at the University College Hospital of old age-related ailment. He was aged 88.
According to a source close to the family, the remains of the legal luminary has been deposited at a morgue.
Born in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital in the early 1930s to an influential family of warriors, the late foremost lawyer and Ibadan high chief attended Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife from where he passed out in Grade One (Distinction, Aggregate 6).
Richard Akinjide travelled to the UK in 1951 for his higher education and was called to the English Bar in 1955 and later in Nigeria. He established his practice of Akinjide & Co soon after.
He was a former minister of education in the government of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa during the first republic and the minister for Justice in the administration of President Shehu Shagari in the second republic. He was a member of the judicial systems sub-committee of the Constitutional Drafting Committee of 1975-1977 and later joined the National Party of Nigeria in 1978. He became the legal adviser for the party and was later appointed the Minister for Justice.
Richard Akinjide is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
He also serves as a chieftain in the Olubadan of Ibadan’s court of clan nobles.
