- His last moments, unfulfilled dreams
A former President of the Court of Appeal and pioneer chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, Justice Mustapha Akanbi, is dead.
Akanbi died at about 1am on Sunday in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, after a brief illness.
According to a family member, who pleaded not to be identified, the foremost jurist “had been on admission at Fate Clinic, Ilorin, in the past 10 days and it’s obvious since Thursday that Baba’s sojourn on earth had come to end.
“It would have taken a great miracle for him to have walked out from hospital alive, even from what he was saying. He was mainly admonishing family members and relatives. It was glaring Baba was already bidding us farewell.
“As we all know, he had been afflicted with old age-related diseases for some of couple of years. He had been in and out of hospital.”
Baba was a no-nonsense disciplinarian, an incorruptible jurist
The family member also extolled the virtues of the late prominent jurist, saying that his dislike for corruption was legendary.
“Baba was a no-nonsense disciplinarian, an incorruptible jurist, who detested corruption in its entirety. You would never see him throw his weight around. He believed in due process and was always ready to accept whatever came his way as an act of Allah,” he added.
When asked about the late Justice Akanbi’s unfulfilled dreams, he said, “Baba was a very religious man, he never allowed anything to come between him and his religion. One of his unfulfilled dreams was to see a country where corruption would be a thing of the past. He also dreamt of a day the judiciary would be rid of corruption and corrupt tendencies.”
Justice Akanbi was born on September 11, 1932, in Accra, Ghana, to Muslim parents from Ilorin, Kwara State.
After completing his secondary education, he worked as an executive officer in the Ghana Civil Service. He was also active as a trade unionist. Upon his return to Nigeria, he worked in the School Broadcasting Department of the Ministry of Education.
Akanbi obtained a scholarship to study Law at the Institute of Administration, now Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State and later went for further legal studies in the United Kingdom.
He was called to the English Bar in 1963, and the Nigerian Bar in January 1964.
He joined the Ministry of Justice and became a Senior State Counsel in 1968. In 1969, he set up a private practice in Kano. In 1974, he was appointed a judge of the Federal Revenue Court, and in January 1977, he was elevated to the Court of Appeal Bench. In 1992, he was made President of the Nigerian Court of Appeal, a position he held until retiring in 1999.
In 2000, former President Olusegun Obasanjo
appointed Akanbi as Chairman of the newly established ICPC.
