My take on the Law School Saga For the past months, we have been hearing about a lot of mess at the Sierra Leone Law School. Few weeks ago, we heard the voice of a young man who was representing about 17 students whose fates to be called to the bar were put on hold or shattered because they were accused of exams malpractice and now we are hearing about the revocation of the certificates of about fifty lawyers accused of the same crime which the seventeen students were accused of. My take on the issue is that the authorities have the right to revoke the certificates of the affected lawyers if they are culpable. Because one should not get away with crime and fraud no matter how long it takes to discover it. If they are guilty in getting certificate in dubious ways, then it means that their certificate should be revoked. The point is that, no matter the time it takes to discover the fraud, when it is discovered the authorities have the right to take action against those who were involved in it. For example, recently in Germany we heard about a PHD holder who plagiarized his thesis. His PHD we revoked and the same thing happened in Nigeria wherein some politicians were discovered to have fake degrees and other documents. Their degrees were revoked from them. I am not only laying blame on our brothers and sisters for what happened but I squarely put the blame the registrar who has been sacked for his involvement in the whole deal. According to sources close to him, he accepted that he had added the grades (top up) for the students who had failed the bar exams but he denied taking money for the grades he added for them. He denied taking bribes, adding that he did it out of sympathy for the students. That led to the question, why didn’t he top up for the other seventeen students? May be they had failed awfully beyond to up. The affected seventeen students’ effort helped to discover the fraud which has been perpetrated and buried by the registrar. Their efforts for getting justice led to the latest discovery and revocation of the certificates of the over fifty lawyers. The other question is that, why it took so long for the investigation team to release the result of the investigation. Why didn’t the Chief Justice and government promptly take action after discovering the work of the registrar? This is the time the ACC to come in to unstitch the bad work of the registrar. I presume that he did that in order to save or protect the sons and daughters of some big judges and lawyers in the country. But he alone will now pay for the price and he must be jailed for this. This man has been perpetrating such crimes for the past years but now the law has catch up with him. I hope he will receive severe punishment and the government must investigate to ascertain whether he has other accomplishes in the crime, which I believed he has. For far too long, the law school is shrouded itself into conspicuously irresponsible and lack of sober leadership. Some people, who are for now deciding factors about who should be called to the bar, think that the law profession is for them and their family members only. Most times the fates of our brothers and sisters whose parents have no money to bribe are roaming the streets of Freetown with their dreams of being lawyers thrown to the dust bin. We are calling for the authorities to make the evidence of the fraud public or one of them to explain to the public about how it happened. What a foolish and irresponsible way of doing things done by the registrar. The sacking of the registrars is welcome news but I think many rotten heads need to roll if things are to get better within the Law School system. There are certain people at the law school and FBC who are bent on protecting or need I say, preserving the law profession for their children and grand children to the exclusion of other people in society. The ideology of depriving people from entering the law profession starts at the University of Sierra Leone where we see people admitted into the law department by luck, for those who are not politically affiliated or do not have strong link in the country. It is apparent that having certain names and belonging to certain tribes will automatically disqualifies you from being admitted at FBC. Don’t be angry about my assertion, the fact is that people with the requisite qualifications are not admitted because they don’t have orders from above who would call for them to be admitted into the law department. The administration would take few people for example, out of one hundred they would take about twenty, who don’t have political or other influence but all the seventy would be taken base on connection or affiliation. The system at FBC has now transferred to the law school. To me, all professions should be opened to all and sundry in society. Anyone who is competent and fit to practice law should be allowed. Why should some people be deprived? The government must clean the system for the people of this country. The spoilers at the Law School must be wedded and smoked out: they should be replaced with decent and open minded people. There must be a level playing field for each and every sierra Leonean aspiring for various professions in the country. Those who think it is only they who can practice law in Sierra Leone are missing the point as those days are gone and will never ever come back. I rest my case.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 12:47:34 +0000
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