The call by Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, President of the Nigerian Bar Association, for banks to expand credit access to female lawyers should not be read as a narrow plea from one profession. It is a sharper question about how Nigeria finances competence, enterprise and professional services in an economy that says it wants inclusive growth but still asks many women to prove twice what male peers often assume once.
Badejo-Okusanya spoke on Wednesday in Abuja at the 19th Annual Banking and Finance Conference of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, during a business session themed Inclusive Leadership, Stronger Systems: The Strategic Role of Women in Building Resilient Ecosystems. Her central argument was direct: many female lawyers want to establish their own firms, but lack the financial backing required to make that ambition commercially real.
According to the NBA President, female lawyers may not always see themselves as entrepreneurs in the conventional sense, but they are credit worthy. She urged financial institutions to create platforms that allow them to access funding to own and scale law firms. She also challenged the wider ecosystem to move beyond ceremonial inclusion, saying talent and competence are not defined by gender.
Her intervention matters because law practice is both a profession and an enterprise. A credible firm needs office infrastructure, research tools, technology subscriptions, staffing, compliance systems, client development and working capital. Without credit, many highly trained female lawyers remain trapped in salaried roles or constrained partnerships, even when they have the competence, reputation and client relationships to build sustainable practices.
Market Implications
For banks, the opportunity is larger than a gender-support initiative. Professional women in law, medicine, accounting, consulting, media, technology and other knowledge sectors represent an under-financed market with relatively strong education, networks and repayment discipline. Properly structured credit for female lawyers could create a new product category around professional-practice finance: loans for chambers, legal-tech tools, arbitration practice, litigation support, compliance advisory and specialist boutique firms.
The risk question should shift from collateral alone to cash flow, client pipeline, receivables, professional standing and business model. Mrs Victoria Ajayi, Group Managing Director of TVC, made a related point when she urged financial institutions to assess women-owned businesses by their cash flows instead of relying mainly on heavy collateral demands.
Mrs Bukola Smith, Chief Executive Officer of FSDH Merchant Bank Limited, added that many banks now have gender-facing programmes, but the Central Bank of Nigeria must help deepen guarantee structures that can substitute for traditional collateral. She also noted that banks already hold significant data and should use it to better understand the needs of female entrepreneurs.
Brand Implications
For banks, supporting female lawyers can become a high-trust brand position if it is designed with substance. A lender that finances credible women-led law firms is not merely running a corporate social responsibility campaign; it is investing in justice-sector enterprise, governance capacity and professional independence. That kind of positioning carries reputational weight in a market where consumers increasingly judge banks by visible economic impact.
For the NBA, the message also strengthens its institutional brand. By placing access to credit on the table, the association is expanding advocacy beyond courtroom welfare into economic empowerment for its members. For female lawyers, ownership of firms is not only a personal milestone; it changes who gets to hire, mentor, brief, negotiate and shape legal-practice culture.
Otunba Debola Osibogun, a former President of CIBN, brought the governance argument into the discussion. She said organisations with women on their boards tend to perform better and record fewer non-performing loans, arguing that the case for women in governance has moved beyond representation to performance. Inclusion that improves decision quality is strategy.
Investor Relevance
Investors should pay attention because the conversation sits at the intersection of finance, professional services, gender economics and institutional resilience. Female-led legal practices can serve SMEs, start-ups, families, creators, property investors and emerging corporate clients who need affordable, specialised legal services. Expanding firm ownership could deepen the legal-services market, improve access to commercial justice and create demand for legal technology, training platforms, insurance products and advisory services.
Prof Henrietta Onwuegbuzie, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Lagos Business School, rightly stressed preparation and competence. She urged women to invest in training and said where women must choose between funds and training, training should come first because competence improves the quality of opportunity.
BRANDECONOMY Insight
The bold opportunity is to convert gender banking from slogan to underwriting architecture. Banks should build credit products for female professionals that combine guarantees, cash-flow assessment, legal-practice mentoring, digital bookkeeping, insurance, business development support and phased disbursement. The CBN can help by expanding risk-sharing instruments, while the NBA can curate credible pipelines of women lawyers ready for practice ownership.
Badejo-Okusanya’s admonition that women should not shrink their ambition to satisfy other people’s expectations speaks to a wider economic truth. Nigeria cannot build resilient systems while underfunding half of its professional talent. If banks want stronger portfolios, they should look carefully at competent women who have been asking less for favours than for fair financial instruments.
