Ex-CJN Dahiru Musdapher is dead

 A former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Dahiru Musdapher, has died.

Mr. Musdapher died in the early hours of Tuesday at the age of 75.

Dahiru Musdapher was appointed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 2011. He served as Chief Judge of the Kano State Judiciary from 1979 to 1985, and as a member of the Court of Appeal from 1985 until 2003. 

The cause of his death was not immediately clear but family members took to social media to break the news.

“My elder brother Justice Dahiru Musdapher former CJN passed on tonight,” Muneer Musdapher, a younger brother of the former CJN wrote on Facebook.

The jurist retired from bench five years ago on attaining the mandatory retirement age of 75.

He was born a member of the Bani Ya’muusa clan in Babura Town in Babura, a local government area in the north of Jigawa State.

The progenitor of the clan, Goni Ya’Musa, was a Fulani scholar, a renowned and respected Islamic jurist and teacher who migrated from the Kanem Bornu Empire in the mid-1800s and pursued a lifelong mission of teaching and Islamic missionary work. The great-grandfather settled in Babura Town, in Jigawa State.

Musdapher’s father, Mallam Musdapher Musa – also a renowned Islamic scholar – served as a principal advisor to several District Heads across the Kano Native Authority during the colonial era, for decades before he was eventually enthroned as the District Head of Babura L.G.A. Mallam Musdaher’s father was the first headmaster of the first primary school in Babura. He died in 1993 as the head of a large and respected family leaving behind over 300 children, grandchildren and great-grand children. My Lord Justice Musdapher is the head of this family.