As the premier and pioneer Department in the Faculty of Law, the Department of Islamic Law Bayero University Kano is unique among its contemporaries in Nigeria. This is due to the richness of the resources, facilities and services and partly due to the pursuit of academic excellence by the staff of the Department.
The Department of Islamic Law was established in August 1987 where the University Senate approved the submission from the Faculty Board of Law for the creation of two more departments, which include Public Law and Private Law. The above decision was taken in order to produce lawyers whose discipline shall reflect and cater for the legal interests of the community in which they practice.
Therefore, the syllabus was designed to accommodate both Islamic Law and English Common Law.
The Faculty’s choice of this combined programme was meant to prepare them realistically for the challenges they shall face in their future career either as judges, private legal practitioners, law lecturers, public sector advisers or corporate consultants, as the case may be Hence, the degree programme was uniquely tailored to provide academic and professional training in Common Law as received in Nigeria and Islamic Law as observed by Muslims and practiced in courts in this part of the country.
The department of Islamic law is the oldest department in the Faculty of Law of Bayero University,
Kano. Its courses are run across the other three departments. With recent the decentralization of the postgraduate programmes of the Faculty, it has an LL.M programme in Islamic Law which commenced from 2017/2018 Session.
It should be stated that even when the LL.M was run as a Faculty based programme, many students conducted their researches in various fields of Islamic Law, thereby making them Islamic Law biased in their dissertation. The LL.M program in Islamic Law enables the department to consolidate on its previous efforts and also focus on developing higher and in-depth researches in Islamic Law. The LLM programme aims at providing the opportunity for postgraduate students to specifically specialize in different areas of Islamic Law.