As Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad retires on Friday, October 27, 2023, there are now only 10 justices left on the Supreme Court’s bench.
On the day a farewell court session is organised in Justice Dattijo’s honour, the retirement notice he gave to the management of the supreme court will expire.
Festus Akande, the Supreme Court’s Director of Press and Information, announced in a statement on Sunday in Abuja that the farewell ceremony would start at 10:00 am in the Supreme Court’s Main Courtroom.
The statement states that legal Olukayode Ariwoola, Chief Justice of Nigeria, will preside over the Special Court Session and will traditionally pay respect to Justice Dattijo with other significant stakeholders in the country’s legal system.
Justice Musa Dattijo was born in Minna on October 27, 1953. He is a native of the Chanchaga Local Government Area of Niger State. From 1960 until 1966, he attended Native Primary School in Minna, where he earned his First School Leaving Certificate.
He attended Sheikh Sabbah College in Kaduna, which is now Sardauna Memorial Secondary School, from 1967 to 1971. From there, he went to Abdullahi Bayero College in Kano for a pre-degree programme, which helped him get accepted right away into the Faculty of Law at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, where he earned a law degree in 1977.
The Nigerian Bar called him on July 2nd, 1977. After that, Justice Dattijo applied for admission to Warwick University in 1982 to pursue an LLM degree, which he eventually earned in 1983.
On November 21, 1998, the Niger State Judiciary promoted Justice Dattijo to the Court of Appeal after serving in various Divisions.
On Tuesday, July 10, 2012, he took the oath of office to become a Justice of the Supreme Court.
The statement read, “The Supreme Court of Nigeria now has 10 Justices following Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad’s retirement.”
