Chief Femi Fani-Kayode started his primary school education at the age of 8 at Brighton College, Brighton in the U. K. after which he went to a prestigious boarding school called Holmewood House Preparatory School in Tunbridge Wells,Kent, South-East England. After distinguishing himself in prep school he gained entry into the famous Harrow School in Harrow on The Hill, United Kingdom and later on into Kelly College in Tavistock, U. K, where he completed the rest of his public school education.
In 1980, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode proceeded to the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies, where he graduated with an LL.B law degree in 1983. He gained entry into Cambridge University (Pembroke College) where his grandfather, his father and his older brother, Akinola (Downing College) had all previously read law. At Cambridge, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode matched his father’s score in his final exams by also getting a very high upper second in his post graduate LL.M degree in 1984. After finishing from Cambridge he went to the Nigerian law school and in 1985 was called to the Nigerian Bar.
In 1993, after a brief illness and under the tutelage of Archbishop Nicholas Duncan- Williams of Ghana, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode found God and became a devout and practicing Pentecostal/Evangelical christian. This experience had a profound effect on him and completely transformed his life style and world view. He was miraculously healed and delivered from sickness and certain death by what he described as “God’s divine, merciful and all-powerful hand” and consequently he gave his life to Jesus Christ, stopped drinking, stopped smoking, stopped reveling and stopped going to parties.
He became a committed and conservative “born again” christian and often told people that he is “nothing but a living manifestation and evidence of God’s immeasurable grace and mercy”. He decided to go back to school to study theology at the Christian Action Faith Bible Seminary in Accra, Ghana. In 1995, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode bagged a diploma in theology from that famous institution.
EDUCATIONAL LEGACY
There is no other family in the history of Africa in which there are five generations of graduates from Oxbridge-level universities.
From 1893 when Rev. Emmanuel Adelabi Kayode (Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s great grandfather) graduated with honors with a Master of Arts degree in theology from Durham University, to 1922 when Justice Victor Adedapo Kayode (Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s grandfather) graduated from Cambridge University with a law degree, to 1943 when Chief Remi Fani-Kayode (Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s father) graduated from Cambridge University with a law degree, to 1984 when Chief Femi Fani-Kayode himself graduated from Cambridge University with a law degree, no family in Nigeria or indeed Africa and few in the world have had four generations of graduates from these elite institutions from such an early age.
The fifth generation of Oxbridge-level graduates was led by Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s eldest daughter, Miss Folake Fani-Kayode, who graduated with a degree from Durham University in 2009 (like her great, great grandfather, Rev. Emmanuel Adelabi Kayode had done, 116 years earlier.
Since then numerous other children of Chief Femi Fani-Kayode have graduated from top British and Western Universities.
Outside of that Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s siblings including Mr. Akinola Fani-Kayode, Mr. Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Mrs. Toyin Bajela (nee Fani-Kayode) and Mrs. Tolu Fanning (nee Fani-Kayode) went to either Cambridge University, Warwick University and London University in the United Kingdom or to Georgetown University in Washington DC in the United States of America.
This represents an extraordinary legacy of first class education from the best Universities the world for five uninterrupted generations.
No other Nigerian or African family has achieved this and very few even in the Western world.