Folake Solanke

Chief Folake Solanke, born March 29, 1932, in Abeokuta, Nigeria, is a Nigerian lawyer who became the first Nigerian woman appointed Senior Advocate of Nigeria, in 1981, the first Nigerian female lawyer to wear the rank's silk gown. She studied at Newcastle University in England before training at Gray's Inn in London, returned to Nigeria to practice in 1962, and was called to the bar in 1963, joining the law office of Chief Frederick Rotimi Williams as junior counsel. In 1972 she was appointed the first Commissioner of Nigeria's former Western State and chaired the Western Nigeria Television Broadcasting Corporation, and in 1994 she was elected international president of Zonta International, the first non-Caucasian and first African to hold that post. She has since published an autobiography, Reaching for the Stars, and a compendium of her lectures and papers.