Nationality Nigerian Ethnicity Yoruba | Citizenship Nigerian Name Akintola Eyiwunmi | |
Occupation juristsolicitoractivist | ||
Akintola Olufemi Eyiwunmi , CON (May 27, 1936 – June 20, 2008) was a Nigerian jurist, former judge at the High Court of Lagos State and Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
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Early life
Justice Eyiwunmi was born in May 1936 in Lagos State, southwestern Nigeria. He attended CMS Grammar school and Methodist Boy’s High School where he obtained the West Africa School Certificate in 1948. In 1957, he proceeded to the University of Hull where he obtained a bachelor's degree in Law on July 1961.
Law career
After he was call to the English bar, he returned to Nigeria to join the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 1962. In 1963, he joined the Oyo State Ministry of Justice at Ibadan where he bagged a scholarship award to study International Air and Space Law at McGill University, Canada. He returned to the Ministry of Justice, Ibadan in 1964 and was appointed a Crown Counsel at the Director of Public Prosecutions's office and was deployed to Lagos State in 1967, the same year the state was established.
In 1974, he was appointed director of Public Prosecution, Lagos State and later Solicitor General in 1978, a position he held till May 23, 1979, when he was appointed to the bench of the High Court of Lagos State as a Judge and in 1988, he became a Justice at the courts of appeals. On November 26, 1998, he was appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, where he retired on May 27, 2006, as Justice.
On March 15, 2006, before his retirement, he served as Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Reform of the Administration of Justice System in Nigeria. In 2008, two years after his retirement, he became a member of the Nigerian Police Service Commission, a position he held until his demise on June 20, 2008.