Former AGF Ajibola, SAN Passes On

Former Attorney-General of the Federation, His Excellency, Judge Abdul Jabbar Bolasodun Adesumbo Ajibola, SAN passed on in the early hours of Sunday, April 9, 2023. This was announced in a press statement signed by his son, Adesegun Ajibola, SAN.

Judge Ajibola was President of the Nigerian Bar Association and Father of Arbitration in Nigeria; Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice; Chairman, Body of Benchers; Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and member of its Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at the Hague; President of the Jurists Association of the World Association of Judges; Member of the United Nations Compensation Commission on Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait; Arbitrator and Commissioner of the Ethiopia/Eritrea Boundary Commission; member, Vice-President and then President of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal; Chairman of the National Boundary Commission and Chairman of the Nigerian Delegation to the Nigeria/Cameroon Mixed Commission on the Bakassi Peninsula; and last but not the least, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, amongst numerous other high profile, national and international commitments, assignments and accolades. 

He was a recipient of many honours, including those from King Abdullah II of Jordan and King Abdullah bin AbdulAziz Al-Saud, the immediate past King of Saudi Arabia. 

Judge Ajibola was a Fellow of the Aal al Bayt Institute of Thought in Amman, Jordan, and has remained for more than a decade, a regular biographee of that Institute’s prestigious publication, ‘‘The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World’’.

At the humanitarian level, Judge Bola Ajibola founded the African Concern in 1994. This was intended as an African response to the Rwandan genocide and many other wars and civil strife, and which then bestraddled the entire African continent in one form or the other. He founded the Islamic Mission for Africa (IMA) in 1996, to promote Islam in its true light as a religion of peace, love and harmonious co-existence amongst all peoples – doing so through the means of education, socialisation, publicity and enlightenment. The crowning glory of the IMA endeavour was the establishment of Crescent University, which became a Private University through the grant of Licence by the Federal Government on 9 June, 2005.