My friend the pioneering British-Nigerian lawyer and activist Tunji Fahm, who has died aged 88, was the first black minority-ethnic lawyer to be appointed as a chief officer of a local authority legal department in the UK, in 1974 at Islwyn (borough) district council, south Wales. He became the council’s chief monitoring officer in 1978 and, later, founder of the first legal practice led by black lawyers in Wales.
When Tunji arrived in the UK in 1954 to study law in Cardiff, he was one of the few African students in the university’s law school.
A leading member of the UK’s West African Students’ Union, he spent weekends in London, and enjoyed listening to Ambrose Campbell and the West African Rhythm Brothers. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1967, and gained a master’s from the London School of Economics in the same year, followed by further legal studies at University College London.
Tunji had intended to return to Nigeria with his family, but death threats and the Biafran war made this impossible. Instead, he held various appointments in local government, both in the UK and abroad, including service in the newly independent Zambia as a town clerk to one of the municipalities, and as a court officer until 1974 when he returned to Wales.
After being appointed chief legal officer in Islwyn in 1974, Wales became his adopted home. Following local government reorganisation in 1996, Tunji established his own legal practice.
A great humanist, Tunji was determined to use his skills to help others, including providing pro bono legal support both for complex immigration cases, and specialist advice for members of the Yoruba communities in the UK and beyond, and serving on the board of a London housing association that supported refugees.
He was founder and convener of the joint committee for ethnic minorities in Wales, and stood as a Labour candidate for the Welsh assembly in 2003 and 2007. In 2006, he was appointed MBE for services to the community in Wales and, three years later, he was granted freedom of the City of London.
Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, to Saratu (nee Animashaun), a trader, and Hameed Atanda Mobolaji, an electrical and civil engineering contractor, Tunji attended Methodist boys high school in Lagos. It was in the city, in the late 1950s, that he met Viola Jumbo; they married in 1960 and went on to have four children. Tunji always carried Yoruba culture in his heart and had planned a final visit to Nigeria, feeling that the sacred odidere bird was calling him home.
Viola died in 2000 and one of his sons, Kayode (Ky), died in 2018. Tunji is survived by his other three children, Tina, Yinka and David, and his granddaughters, Katherine and Tolu.
