Mallam Yusuf Olaolu Ali is principal partner and founder, Yusuf Ali & Co, a law firm he established in 1994. Since then, he has attained the great height of being counted among the topmost legal luminaries in Nigeria with vast experience in election petition advocacy, constitutional law and litigation, among others.
Operating from his offices at Ilorin, Lagos and Abuja, he has featured prominently in high profile election petition cases across the country. Some of the concluded cases he has handled up to the court of appeal and Supreme Court levels include the Ekiti State governorship election petition arising from the 2015 polls, Adeleke v Oyetola 2018, Osun State governorship electoral dispute, 2019 Benue State governorship election petition and Abia State governorship primary election case between Otti and Ogah in 2014.
Ali led the legal team of former Olusegu Agagu of the Peoples Democratic Party against the petition filed by former Governor Olusegun Mimiko in the 2007 election in Ondo State.
He also featured in Osun State house of representatives election dispute between Bamidele and Bello and provided professional arguments that guided a constitutional case of the removal of elected local government council officials by then Oyo State governor.
Yusuf Ali & Co., also known as Ghalib Chambers, has at its command lawyers with vast experience in various legal practice areas, groomed to meet clients’ needs for specialisation and dedication in enforcing their constitutional rights and other interests.
Ali is a 1978 law graduate of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University where he finished with a 2nd Class Upper Division. He won the prestigious Federal Merit Award for undergraduates and a University Scholar while an undergraduate at Ife. He also graduated with a 2nd Class Upper Division from the Nigerian Law School.
He completed his Master’s degree programme in law in the same university in 1991 when he bagged his LLM. He was appointed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria in 1989 as a notary public.
He attained the highest professional honour at the Nigerian Bar in 1997 when he was conferred with the prestigious title of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
Ali joined the law Firm of Adegboyega Awomolo & Co in 1983 and rose to become a partner before he left to establish Yusuf Ali & Co. in 1994. He has been in active legal practice for more than three decades during which he has traversed all the superior courts of record from the high courts to the Supreme Court.
He has attained the status of an iconic legal practitioner, a renowned and respected name in law across Nigeria and beyond and an inspiration to the present and upcoming generations of lawyers.
To him, his success in attaining the pinnacle of the legal profession is a combination of virtues – faith and hard work, passion, integrity and honesty as well as patience and humility.
Ali has extended his versatile knowledge and experience far and wide through his membership of many professional bodies such as Nigerian Bar Association, International Bar Association, American Bar Association, Commonwealth Lawyers Association, among others.
He is an associate lecturer at the faculty of law, University of Ilorin and has delivered more than 300 papers on diverse topics at various fora, including the International Bar Association conferences, Commonwealth Law Association conferences, annual conferences of the Nigerian Bar Association, among others. He had contributed toward the development constitutional law, among other legal fields through research works published in local and international law journals.
