A review of the retired Supreme Court Justice’s official address finds no record of the quotation circulating on social media.
A Facebook post by lawyer Aninze Ekene has renewed public discussion about the judicial legacy of retired Supreme Court Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad after attributing to him a statement that “Nigerians have lost confidence in the Supreme Court and the judiciary because they believe it has been taken over by judicial bandits and bribe-takers.”
In the post, Ekene announced plans to review some of Justice Dattijo’s judgments, adding that readers would decide whether the retired jurist was “morally qualified” to have made such a statement.
The claim is capable of attracting public attention because it attributes unusually strong language to a former Justice of Nigeria’s highest court. That makes one question unavoidable: Did Justice Dattijo actually say those words?
To answer that question, Law & Society reviewed the official text of Justice Dattijo’s valedictory address delivered at the Supreme Court on 27 October 2023.
The review found that the quotation reproduced in the Facebook post does not appear in the speech. The official address contains neither the expression “judicial bandits” nor the statement that the Supreme Court had been “taken over by judicial bandits and bribe-takers.”
That finding does not diminish the significance of Justice Dattijo’s retirement address. If anything, the speech remains one of the most candid institutional assessments delivered by a serving Justice of the Supreme Court.
Throughout the address, Justice Dattijo drew attention to structural issues affecting the administration of justice. He criticised the concentration of administrative authority within the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, lamented the dwindling number of Justices of the Supreme Court, expressed concern over judicial funding and called for reforms that would strengthen the independence, efficiency and credibility of the courts.
He also acknowledged that public confidence in the judiciary had come under pressure. In doing so, he referred to criticisms already circulating within legal and public circles and urged those responsible for administering the justice system to confront those concerns through meaningful institutional reform. The official text, however, does not contain the words now being attributed to him on social media.
Justice Dattijo’s judgments are public documents and remain open to rigorous examination. Lawyers, scholars and members of the public are entitled to analyse his decisions, criticise his reasoning where they disagree with it and debate his contribution to Nigerian jurisprudence.
Equally, debates of that nature are strongest when they begin with an accurate account of the historical record. Before assessing whether a judge was justified in making a particular statement, it is necessary to establish that the statement was, in fact, made.
On the official text of Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad’s valedictory address, Law & Society found no evidence that he described the Supreme Court as having been taken over by “judicial bandits and bribe-takers.”
That conclusion does not determine whether the judiciary deserves criticism or whether Justice Dattijo’s own decisions should withstand scrutiny. Those are separate questions, and they remain legitimate subjects of legal debate. The present inquiry is narrower. It concerns the accuracy of a quotation attributed to a retired Justice of the Supreme Court.
On the documentary record reviewed by Law & Society, the quotation circulating on social media cannot be traced to the official valedictory speech delivered on 27 October 2023.
Click here to download the judgment.
SPEECH-BY-HON.-JUSTICE-M.-DATTIJO
