Distinguished members of the Kasunmu family, My Lords, Learned Senior Advocates, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
I bring the condolences of the Nigerian Bar Association and of lawyers across our country as we bid farewell to one of the great patriarchs of the Nigerian legal profession, Professor Alfred Bandele
Kasunmu, SAN.
There are lawyers whose careers are remembered by the cases they argued. There are teachers who are
remembered by the books they wrote and the students they taught. And there are public servants who are remembered by the offices they occupied.
Professor Kasunmu was all of these and yet he was something more.
He belonged to that rare generation of lawyers who helped to build the institutions, traditions and
standards upon which generations after them have stood.
His was an extraordinary journey through virtually every dimension of our profession: from the lecture
halls of the University of Ife and the University of Lagos, where he became Professor and Dean of Law;
to public service as Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Lagos State; to the highest levels
of advocacy as one of the earliest members of the Inner Bar.
For more than six decades, he taught the law, practised the law, developed the law and, perhaps most
importantly, taught generations of us what it meant to belong to this profession.
But today, as we mourn him, I believe his greatest legacy lies beyond his titles and accomplishments.
It lies in the lawyers he taught.
The advocates he mentored.
The minds he challenged.
The standards he upheld.
And the example he left behind.
Professor Kasunmu came from a generation for whom being a lawyer meant more than possessing a
practising certificate. The law was a calling. Learning mattered.
Preparation mattered. Courtesy
mattered. Integrity mattered. And the dignity of the profession mattered.
Those values are perhaps more important to us today than ever before.
And so, as President of the Nigerian Bar Association, I believe that the most fitting tribute we can pay
Professor Kasunmu is not simply to speak eloquently about the Bar he served, but to recommit
ourselves to preserving the very best of the Bar that his generation handed down to us.
A Bar in which excellence is pursued.
A Bar in which senior lawyers deliberately raise those coming behind them.
A Bar in which professional disagreement never becomes personal discourtesy.
A Bar in which integrity remains more valuable than advantage.
And a Bar whose members understand that the privilege of being called a lawyer carries with it a
responsibility to justice, to society and to generations yet unborn.
Professor Alfred Bandele Kasunmu, SAN, has completed his own distinguished chapter in the story of
the Nigerian Bar. But the thousands of lawyers whom he taught, mentored, influenced and inspired
mean that his story does not end here.
That is the peculiar immortality of a great teacher: he continues to live in people who may never
fully know how much of him they carry within them.
To his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the entire Kasunmu family, we thank you for
sharing him with the legal profession and with our country.
On behalf of the Nigerian Bar Association, I extend our deepest condolences.
We mourn a great lawyer.
We honour an extraordinary teacher.
We salute a distinguished Senior Advocate.
And we bid farewell to a true elder of the Nigerian Bar.
May the soul of Professor Alfred Bandele Kasunmu, SAN, rest in perfect peace.
Amen.
Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, FCIArb(UK)
President, Nigerian Bar Association
