Afe Babalola & Co. (Emmanuel Chambers) was founded in the year 1965 by a then relatively young legal practitioner now known as Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, a leading legal luminary and foremost practitioner. Since its inception, Emmanuel Chambers has provided legal advice and representation to a long list of individual and corporate clients as well as to governments and sovereign institutions. Versed in various dispute-resolution outlets and armed with four in-house Silks and scores of competent legal practitioners, Emmanuel Chambers remains poised to blaze the trail in the practice of law.
Emmanuel Chambers has broad and extensive experience in arbitration law and practice. Boasting a team of experienced arbitrators and arbitration practitioners, the firm’s competence in arbitral matters is well regarded. We have on staff over 15 members of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK) while our Principal and Founding Partner, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN is the current President of the Nigerian Institute of Chartered Arbitrators (NICA). Managing Partner, Bayo Adenipekun, SAN heads the team representing the Federal Republic of Nigeria before the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands. Deputy Managing Partner, Olu Daramola, SAN is an adept commercial practitioner who regularly represents business entities in commercial disputes straddling our superior Courts and before arbitral panels. Our arbitration experience cuts across a broad spectrum of sectors including construction, quantities, project management and execution, oil and gas, labour, intellectual property, personal injury, property and government business.
Afe Babalola & Co. boasts extensive practice experience in criminal matters and litigation. Our clients regularly depend on us for advisory support in Police Interviews and for their admittance to administrative and judicial bail. We provide tough, insistent and thorough Criminal Defence litigation services with equal emphasis on the legal requirements for a conviction as well as on factual and evidentiary analysis. We recognise that the liberty of a citizen depends on the quality and effectiveness of our representation and realise the responsibility we owe to society to ensure that only the best evidence which establishes guilt beyond reasonable doubt is available and presented for consideration to the Court. The firm’s pro bono practice anchors on providing legal representation to indigent defendants as well as convicts some of whom instruct the firm only after having been handed capital punishment sentences. Emmanuel Chambers’ partner, Sina Ogungbade anchors the firm’s pro bono practice and has secured the reduction of sentences in Stephen Egwu v. The State and Okiki Faleye v. The State both being appeals where the Appellants had originally been sentenced to die. In John Olomo v. The State and Ahmadu v. State, Sina successfully obtained the acquittal of the Appellants who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to die. Emmanuel Chambers presently represents defendants in on-going criminal matters before all strata of our judicial system. Afe Babalola has also prosecuted for the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria including the famed prosecution of the alleged attempted killers of the late Prof. Dora Akunyuli.
The law of torts and personal injury is one of our commonest and oldest practice areas dating back to when our Founding and Principal Partner operated as a sole practitioner. Emmanuel Chambers regularly represents clients in the prosecution and defence of tortious actions ranging from negligence claims, to nuisance, trespass and occupier’s liability claims. The firm also actively helps clients prosecute damage to personality by filing and prosecuting defamation actions while also defending clients alleged to have defamed other. The firm famously prosecuted the libel suit, Alawiye v. Ogunsanya all the way to the Supreme Court of Nigeria whereat the appeal was dismissed for being caught by the principle in Okafor v. Nweke whereas we had obtained favourable judgements at the High Court and Court of Appeal. We also successfully fought 3 different actions on behalf of former Federal Minister, Prof. Tam David-West challenging the publication of defamatory material regarding him.
Emanuel Chambers has an uncanny sense for “chasing the money” on behalf of clients. Using our knowledge of the law of contract, banking, hire-purchase, commerce, etc., we recover debts owed to our clients. Our lawyers have a rich appreciation of the time-value of money and understand that a debt loses value unless monetary realities reflect in an award or judgement. Together with our team of allied financial experts, we provide Courts and Tribunals with the legal impetus for the appreciation of debts and the indices to compute by. Afe Babalola & Co. successfully represented the Respondent in UBA Plc. v. BTL Ltd (2006) 19 NWLR (Pt. 1013) 61, a multi-billion Naira dispute in which the Respondent was awarded financial compensation in excess of ₦7 billion.
On behalf of commercial banks, Afe Babalola & Co. successfully recovers debts from recalcitrant debtors using a combination of interim, interlocutory and final orders of the Court, where appropriate.
Having provided legal solutions to clients for more than half a century, Afe Babalola & Co. has developed a reputation as a family law firm providing advice and services to individuals at different generational levels of the same family. We regularly draft, lodge and attest wills and testamentary dispositions. We provide advice on inter vivos (lifetime) property settlement options for persons unwilling to dispose their properties by wills. The firm also regularly acts as Solicitor to estates and as executor of wills.
Emmanuel Chambers is very experienced in matrimonial causes and post-marriage negotiations. Senior Associate and Feminine Rights activist, Abimbola Arowosebe heads the family law practice of the firm.
Afe Babalola & Co. quite often represents disputants in real property disputes. At Emmanuel Chambers, we realise that the value of land transcends it money-worth or its market price but stretches into the realm of peculiar utility, strategic placement and sentimental attachment. We understand that for many a landowner, landholding is as much an investment as it is an asset base. Consequently, we are quite well positioned to institute and defend landholding disputes all across Nigeria as we have done for decades now. Afe Babalola obtained Lagos and has Our property law practice is not restricted to dispute resolution services but also spreads to drafting and perfecting deeds for the transfer of title, creation of mortgages, tenancies, licenses and other forms of interest in land. We also regularly manage real property and act as Solicitors to housing development schemes. Currently, the firm advises on a housing development scheme in Abuja worth in excess of.
At Emmanuel Chambers, our clients quite often have to contend with competing claims for the hearts and souls of their enterprises. These disputes present in a number of way including shareholder disputes, boardroom tussles and executive employment squabbles. Emmanuel Chambers is no stranger to these disputes and whether through the Courts, arbitral tribunals or by mutual negotiations, has a proven track record of reaching a resolution.
