Background and Objective: Jaw cysts are quite common in dental practice, but there has been no published study from northern Nigeria. We therefore carried out this retrospective study to document the pattern in Kano. Materials and Method: This was a six year (2006 to 2012) retrospective study of all cysts of the mandible and maxilla diagnosed at the pathology department of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano. Results: Fifty-four histologically diagnosed jaw cysts were seen during the six year study period, comprising 32 males and 22 females (M:F = 1.4:1). The age range was 3 to 87 years with highest occurrence in the 2nd and 3rd decades. Dentigerous and radicular cysts were the commonest comprising 48.2% and 29.6% respectively. While dentigerous cysts peaked in the 3rd, radicular cysts peaked in the 5th decade. Cysts were more frequent in the mandible than maxilla with a ratio of 1.7:1. Over four-fifth (81%) of dentigerous cysts were in the mandible while radicular cysts mostly occurred in the maxilla (62.5%). Other jaw cysts in this series were simple bone cysts (7.4%), aneurysmal bone cysts (5.5%), odontogenic keratocysts (3.7%), nasopalatine (3.7%) and eruption (1.9%). Conclusion: With regards to the frequency of different jaw cysts, our findings were broadly consistent with the few published Nigerian and sub-Sahara Africa reports, but at variance with most studies outside the continent which documented a preponderance of radicular cysts. However, other parameters (age, gender and site distribution) largely concur with global trends.