STELLA THOMAS, FIRST FEMALE LAWYER AND FIRST FEMALE MAGISTRATE IN NIGERIA 

Did you know that Stella Jane Thomas (later Stella Marke) was a Yoruba Nigerian lawyer of Sierra Leone Creole descent that received a law degree from Oxford University and in 1943 became the first woman magistrate in Nigeria?

Stella Thomas was born in 1906, in Lagos, Nigeria, the daughter of Peter John Claudius Thomas, a Sierra Leone Creole businessman based in Lagos. Her father was the first African to head the Lagos Chamber of Commerce. She attended the Annie Walsh Memorial School in Freetown, Sierra Leone, "the oldest secondary school for girls in West Africa". Her brother, Peter Thomas, became the first West African pilot commissioned in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Another of her brother, Stephen Peter Thomas, was the first Chief Justice of the Mid-West region.

While she studied law at Oxford and was a member of the Middle Temple in London, she was active with the West African Students Union, and a founding member of the League of Coloured Peoples, organized by Harold Moody. 

She lived in Bloomsbury, and starred in a production of Jamaican poet Una Marson's first play, At What a Price, put on by the league at London's Scala Theatre, featuring mostly London students in an all-Black cast.

Thomas was the first black African woman called to the bar in Great Britain, in 1933. In 1934, she was the only African woman to participate in a discussion with Margery Perham at the Royal Society of Arts, and she took the opportunity to criticize Lord Lugard and African colonialism before an influential audience. When she returned to West Africa, she was the first woman lawyer in the region.

Upon her return to West Africa, she initially enrolled at the Sierra Leonean bar and in December 1935, she went back to Lagos and set up a law practice along Kakawa Street, Lagos Island. She worked on a wide range of legal matters, including criminal cases and family issues, and also worked with lawyers Alex E. J. Taylor and Eric Moore.

In 1943, she became West Africa's first woman magistrate, serving Ikeja magistrate court with jurisdiction for Mushin, Agege and Ikorodu districts. She later was a magistrate at the Saint Anna Court house and the Botanical Gardens Court in Ebute-Metta. She retired as a magistrate in Sierra Leone in 1971.

In November 1944, Stella Thomas married a fellow legal professional, Richard Bright Marke, in Freetown. She died in 1974, aged 68.

Aside Stella Thomas, other female lawyers in Nigeria are:

◼️Modupe Omo-Eboh (1952): First female judge in Nigeria (upon her appointment as a Judge of the High Court in Nigeria in 1969).

◼️Folake Solanke (1962): First female lawyer in Nigeria to become Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Senior Counsel (1981).

◼️Victoria Ayodele Uzoamaka Onejeme (1965): First female to become an Attorney General in the history of Nigeria (1978).

◼️Dora Wilson-Ekwo: First female lawyer (who is a Lieutenant Colonel) in the Nigerian Armed Forces (c. 1993).

◼️Rosaline Omotosho (1961): First female to serve as a chief judge in Nigeria (1995).

◼️Hauwa Ibrahim (1996): First Muslim female lawyer in Nigeria.

◼️Roseline Ukeje (1971): First female justice appointed as the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court in Nigeria (2001).

◼️Hansine N. Donli: First Nigerian female to serve as a Judge of the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (2001).

◼️Aloma Mariam Mukhtar (1967): First female appointed as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and its Chief Justice (2009–2014). She was also the first female lawyer in Northern Nigeria, as well as the first female Judge of the Kano High Court, Nigeria.

◼️Elsie Nwanwuri Thompson:[349] First Nigerian (female) to serve as a Judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (2010).

◼️Zainab Bulkachuwa: First female judge to serve as the President of the Court of Appeals of Nigeria (2014).

Source: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Thomas