You go, girl! Senate confirms Aloma Mukhtar as the new Chief Justice of Nigeria

by Isi Esene

The Nigerian Senate has on Wednesday confirmed Justice Aloma Muktar as the new Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). She becomes the first female CJN.

She is to replace outgoing Justice Dahiru Musdapher, who is leaving office on July 15, having reached the mandatory age of 70.

She was nominated last week by President Goodluck Jonathan who forwarded her name to the senate  for screening.

Justice Mukhtar, who holds double record as the first female to be promoted to the Court of Appeal Bench, as well as, the first female jurist in the annals of the country, was born in Kano. She is the first female lawyer from the northern part of the country having being called to the Nigerian Bar in 1967, a year after she was adopted into the English Bar.

In September 24, 1987, she became the first female to be appointed a judge in the appellate court, and was sworn-in as the first female to ascend the Supreme Court Bench eighteen years later.

Although she was the first woman on the bench, she quickly ascended the judicial ladder to become the most senior ranking justice of the Supreme Court besides the incumbent CJN, Justice Musdapher, who in-line with section 291(1) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, will bow out of the judiciary on July 15 at age 70, the mandatory retirement age for judicial officers within his cadre.

 

Comments (3)

  1. This is very great to hear.

    Please Ma, root out all the corrupt leaders. Let justice take a new definition. Help clean our society of the moral mess and corrupt menace.

    In this fight against corruption, a female judge may help to set things right.

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