AISOSA IYOBOSA IDEMUDIA

Abuja barrister and former NNPC counsel who took on cases nobody else would

She was called to the Bar on a Thursday in 1980 and, by her own account, took her first brief the following Monday. It concerned a widow in Mushin whose late husband's brothers had taken her house. Aisosa Idemudia won it within a year and never charged a kobo.

Born in Benin City in 1958, the daughter of a civil servant and a seamstress, Aisosa was educated at Idia College, then read Law at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, where she was one of eleven women in a class of ninety. She was called to the Bar after the Nigerian Law School in Lagos, and her first employer was the Legal Department of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Over twelve years she drafted contracts, negotiated with oil service companies and quietly became the most feared junior counsel in the building.

When NNPC's headquarters moved to Abuja, she went with it, and in 1994 she opened her own chambers in Garki. Her firm handled commercial work for oil companies and, every Friday afternoon, free cases for women with nowhere else to go. She volunteered at the Legal Aid Council's clinic in Gwagwalada for nineteen years, and mentored more than thirty younger lawyers.

She loved Benin bronze in every size, owa soup with starch, and sitting on her balcony in Maitama on Sunday evenings with a pot of tea and a thick judgment to read. Friends remember an enormous laugh and an equally enormous tolerance for people who were sincerely wrong.

Aunty Sosa died peacefully at home in May 2024, after a long illness she bore with characteristic composure. She leaves her husband, two children, and a legion of grateful clients and colleagues.

“The law is a long, narrow door. Your job is to hold it open for the next person.”