By Emmanuel Okogba

The 24-year-old Olaniwun Ajayi LP associate navigating high-stakes transactions, finding mentors, and building a career in project finance.

In our “Young Professionals Series,” Vanguard sits down with rising stars across Nigeria’s business landscape to discuss their career journeys, lessons learned, and advice for other young professionals. This week, we spoke with Funmilayo “Funmi” Fenwa, a 24-year-old associate at Olaniwun Ajayi LP who has worked on some of Nigeria’s most significant energy and infrastructure transactions.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Funmi. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get into project finance law?

Thank you for having me. Honestly, I didn’t set out to become a project finance lawyer. When I joined Olaniwun Ajayi as a graduate trainee in 2017, I was interested in corporate law broadly. But I was assigned to work on an infrastructure financing matter in my first few months, and I found it fascinating. Project finance sits at this intersection of law, business, policy, and development. You’re not just drafting documents, you’re helping structure transactions that build power plants, roads, and telecommunications networks. That appealed to me.

You’ve worked on some major deals recently, including the Seplat-Eland transaction. What’s it like being a junior lawyer on such high-profile matters?

It’s intense! [laughs] These transactions involve enormous complexity, multiple jurisdictions, regulatory approvals, commercial negotiations, and technical due diligence. As a junior lawyer, you’re often managing the details that senior lawyers don’t have time for. But those details matter enormously. A missed regulatory requirement or a poorly drafted provision can derail a half-billion-dollar transaction.

The pressure is real, but so is the learning opportunity. I’ve learned more in three years at Olaniwun Ajayi than I could have learned in ten years doing routine work elsewhere.

What does your day-to-day work actually look like?

It varies depending on where we are in a transaction. During due diligence phases, I might spend days reviewing government licenses, regulatory filings, contracts, really getting into the weeds of a company’s legal history. You’re looking for risks, inconsistencies, anything that could affect the transaction.

During negotiation phases, I often coordinate with other counsel teams, prepare negotiating positions, and draft and revise agreements. On some matters, I lead calls with local counsel across multiple countries to ensure we’re all aligned.

There’s also a lot of coordination with clients. You’re constantly updating them, getting their input on strategy, explaining complex legal issues in business terms they can act on.

You mentioned coordination across multiple countries. How do you navigate working across different legal systems?

It’s one of the most challenging but interesting aspects of the work. A typical infrastructure project in Africa might involve Nigerian law, the law of the sponsor’s jurisdiction, the law of the lenders’ jurisdiction, and international commercial law principles. You can’t be an expert in all of these, so you work with local counsel. But someone needs to coordinate all those inputs into a coherent whole, that’s often my role.

The key is asking good questions. Local counsel knows their jurisdiction, but they may not understand how their jurisdiction’s requirements interact with requirements elsewhere. Your job is to spot those intersections and work through them.

What’s been your biggest challenge so far in your career?

Early on, it was imposter syndrome. I’d be in meetings with senior partners, CEOs, government officials, people with decades of experience, and I’d think, “What am I doing here? I’m 25 years old.” You have to learn to trust that if you’re in the room, there’s a reason. You have something to contribute.

The other challenge is knowing when to ask for help versus when to figure things out yourself. Junior lawyers worry about looking incompetent if they ask too many questions. But asking a clarifying question early is better than making an expensive mistake later.

How did you overcome the imposter syndrome?

Honestly, I still struggle with it sometimes! [laughs] But what helped was having mentors who believed in me before I fully believed in myself. Professor Ajayi and other senior partners at the firm would assign me responsibilities that felt beyond my capabilities at the time. But they wouldn’t have given me those responsibilities if they didn’t think I could handle them.

Also, preparing thoroughly helps. If I’m going into a client meeting, I make sure I know the file inside and out. I anticipate questions they might ask. Preparation builds confidence.

Speaking of mentors, what role have they played in your development?

Mentors have been absolutely critical. I’ve been fortunate to work with partners who invest time in developing junior lawyers rather than just using us as document review machines.

Good mentors do three things. First, they give you challenging work that stretches your capabilities. Second, they provide feedback, not just “this is wrong, fix it,” but “here’s why this doesn’t work and here’s how to think about it differently.” Third, they advocate for you when opportunities arise.

I’d encourage every young professional to actively seek out mentors. Don’t wait for mentorship to happen to you. Identify people whose careers you admire and whose values align with yours, and find ways to add value to them while learning from them.

You’re working on transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. How do you handle that responsibility at 24?

You take it seriously, and you don’t work alone. On any major transaction, there’s a team. Senior partners are reviewing your work. Other associates are checking your analysis. Clients are asking questions that force you to think harder about your recommendations.

The key is understanding what you don’t know and being honest about it. If I’m uncertain about something, I say so and we work through it. The dangerous junior lawyer is the one who pretends to know more than they do.

Beyond your work at the firm, you’ve been publishing academic articles. Why is that important to you?

I think practicing lawyers should engage with academic discourse in our field. Academia asks big-picture questions that we don’t always have time to think about when we’re focused on closing deals. Questions like: How should ESG considerations be integrated into infrastructure finance? How do we balance stakeholder interests in large development projects? What role should local content requirements play in foreign investment?

These questions shape the future of our field. If practitioners don’t contribute to these conversations, we leave them entirely to academics who may not understand practical realities.

Also, writing forces clarity of thought. When you have to explain an idea in writing, you often realize you don’t understand it as well as you thought. Writing makes you a better thinker, which makes you a better lawyer.

You’ve been accepted to NYU Law School for an LL.M. starting next year. Why pursue further education now?

A few reasons. First, I want to deepen my technical knowledge in areas like capital markets, cross-border transactions, and international finance. NYU has one of the world’s best corporate law faculties.

Second, I want exposure to different perspectives. I’ve worked in Nigeria my entire career. Spending time in the U.S., learning from professors and classmates from around the world, will broaden how I think about problems.

Third, the network. NYU’s LL.M. program brings together talented lawyers from dozens of countries. Those relationships will be valuable throughout my career.

Do you plan to return to Nigeria after your studies?

I’m keeping options open. I love Nigeria, this is home. The work I’ve been able to do here on projects that genuinely affect millions of Nigerians’ lives has been incredibly fulfilling. But I also want to see what opportunities exist internationally.

Ideally, I’d like a career that allows me to bridge Nigerian and international markets. There’s enormous need for Nigerian professionals who understand both our local context and international best practices in infrastructure development. If I can play that bridging role, that would be meaningful.

What advice would you give to other young professionals starting their careers?

Several things come to mind.

First, choose environments that invest in your development. Not every firm or company cares about developing junior talent. Find places that do. You’ll learn faster and go further.

Second, take initiative. Don’t wait for interesting work to be assigned to you. When you see an opportunity to contribute, volunteer. When you see a problem, propose a solution. The young professionals who advance fastest are the ones who create value proactively rather than just completing assigned tasks.

Third, build relationships across your organization, not just up the hierarchy. Your peers today will be senior leaders in ten years. The administrative staff who manage schedules and logistics can make your life much easier if you treat them with respect. Relationships matter.

Fourth, invest in your technical skills. There’s no substitute for being excellent at the core work. You can have great relationships and a wonderful attitude, but if you can’t draft a solid agreement or conduct thorough due diligence, you won’t advance.

Fifth, maintain perspective. This work is important, but it’s not life and death. When you’re working until midnight on a Friday, it’s easy to lose sight of that. Make time for family, friends, activities that recharge you. Sustainable careers require balance.

What does success look like to you?

That’s evolved. Early in my career, success was about proving I belonged, getting good performance reviews, being assigned to bigger matters, and earning respect from senior lawyers.

Now, I think about success differently. It’s about impact. Am I working on transactions that matter? Am I helping to build infrastructure that improves people’s lives? Am I mentoring younger lawyers the way I was mentored? Am I contributing to my field through scholarship or policy engagement?

Success is also about options. I want to build a career where I have choices about the work I do, the clients I serve, and the places I live. That requires building skills, relationships, and reputation.

One last question: What’s something you’ve learned in your career that you wish you’d known at the beginning?

That making mistakes is okay, actually, it’s necessary. I was so afraid of making errors early on that I was sometimes paralyzed by perfectionism. I’d spend hours on minor details because I was terrified of getting something wrong.

What I’ve learned is that everyone makes mistakes. Senior partners make mistakes. What distinguishes good lawyers from average ones isn’t that they never err, it’s how they respond when they do. Do you catch mistakes before they become problems? When you do make an error, do you acknowledge it quickly and fix it? Do you learn from it so you don’t repeat it?

Give yourself permission to be a beginner. You don’t have to know everything on day one. You just have to be committed to learning and improving continuously.

Thank you so much for your time and insights, Funmi. We wish you all the best at NYU and in your career.

Thank you. I really enjoyed this conversation.

About the Interviewee

Funmilayo “Funmi” Fenwa is an Associate at Olaniwun Ajayi LP, where she focuses on project finance, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate law. She graduated with First Class Honours from Nottingham Trent University and placed in the top 2% nationally on the Nigerian Bar examinations. She has worked on major transactions in energy, infrastructure, and natural resources sectors. She has been accepted to New York University School of Law’s LL.M. program for 2021-2022.