****please I will advise you to take pain in reading this-you will know only (1) Only one Nigerian university with full accreditation to offer # law (2) madona university and university of Abuja facilities of law suspended (3) You will know Why those studying Law in National Open university of Nigeria cant be lawyers...... Happy reading..... Why Open University students can’t be lawyers— Law School D-G Adesola Onadeko Posted by: TONY AKOWE and ERIC IKHILAE in Saturday Interview 8 hours ago Olanrewaju Adesola Onadeko, a former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of the Republic of Gambia, was Secretary, Council of Legal Education and later, Deputy Director-General of the Nigerian Law School (NLS), Lagos campus. He later rose to the office of the Director General of the NLS on December 11, 2013. In this interview with TONY AKOWE and ERIC IKHILAE, Onadeko spokes on sundry issues, including the progress made so far by the institution and efforts being made to sustain the required standard in the teaching of law in the country. Excerpts: THE Nigeria Law School was established to provide legal and practical training for both foreign and Nigeriantrained law graduates; 51 years down the line, will you say that the school has effectively achieved that purpose? I will say yes, and for good reasons too. From the modest beginning in January 1963, when the first set of eight students commenced training; if you do a little bit of arithmetic, you will realise that if those men were in their 20s, they will be approaching 80 years now. Some of them are still alive. One of them, Justice Ajuyah, was the President of the Customary Court of the defunct Bendel State. His son is the present Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General of Delta State. Others include Senator Oyiabo Obi and Justice Shonaike, who was Chief Judge of Ogun State. These are three members of that first set of the Law School that I know and with whom we are still in contact. When talking about the Law School fulfilling its mandate or fulfilling the dreams of its founding fathers, I will say that the school has produced personnel for an entire arm of government. Since judges have to be lawyers, it goes to say that it is the products of the Nigeria Law School that are manning the Judiciary arm of government. I am proud to say that today, our Judiciary is one that is essentially home-bred. From the Chief Justice of Nigeria, who is the product of the Nigeria Law School, to all the Justices of the Supreme Court, the President of the Court of Appeal, all the judges of the Court of Appeal, the Chief Judges of the 36 states high courts and all the personnel of Nigerian courts are all products of the Nigeria Law School. What more can we say? If you go to the executive arm of government, the Attorney General of the Federation, who is the official leader of the Bar is a product of the Nigeria Law School, as well as all the attorneys generals of the 36 states, among other individuals too numerous to mention. If the Law School is traceable to all these functionaries some 51 years on, and the school is still growing strong, keeping pace with the rest of the world in our curriculum and in the subject that we expose our students to, then we must be doing well. We are mindful that we are training lawyers for the 21st century and things have changed since 1963. So, we are keeping pace with that. That is why our lawyers can go abroad and take the examination of the Bars of those countries and be enrolled to practise there. So, I am proud to say that we have come of age and needless to say that the dream of the forefathers and their vision has been fulfilled by this institution. You became the Director-General of this institution in December 2013. What has been the experience so far? It has been an eventful experience. Apart from the headquarters of the school in Abuja, there are five campuses across the country. Coordinating what goes on in those campuses has been a very interesting experience, not only in terms of what they do daily, but also in the areas of admission of students and their deployment to campuses, preparation of these students for internship programme, law office and law courts attachment, debriefing them by way of portfolio assessment and the Bar final examination, which we concluded last month. For the first time in the history of the school, we conducted the final Bar examination by deploying ICT to the fullest. Questions were not taken by hand to any campus. We used ICT to transmit those questions and there was adequate security without incidents. That was quite a rewarding experience for us. It makes the job easier and it involved the campuses more because the questions were printed there. We intend to improve on that in subsequent years. Administratively, there are lots to do. But don’t forget that I have been in the system for a number of years. Without being immodest, I would say that I will be the last academic to hold all the positions and also the highest administrative position in the Law School. Along the line, I was Director of Administration and Secretary to the Council, which is now purely an administrative position. No academic will ever hold that position again. What have been the major challenges? There are challenges that we face on a daily basis. We only strive to overcome them by relying on the cooperation of our staff. If you start from admission, we were compelled to run two sessions- in-one this year. That was shortly after I came into office. The ASUU strike of last year, which lasted for several months, created a backlog for us and we had to bear in mind the interest of the students. So, we quickly put together a structure for that purpose. And in April this year, we admitted another set of students and those students are now on internship programme. That was a big challenge, because it is more work on the staff who would miss their vacation. I don’t think there is any staff who can take a full leave until August 2016. You talked about the deployment of ICT in transmitting exam questions. Was that because of incidents of examination leakages that we have heard of in recent times? No, not exactly. Before the last final Bar examination, our questions used to be printed at the headquarters and air freighted and road freighted to the campuses the same day to the campuses for the exam to commence at 3.00pm. That in itself had its own advantages and disadvantages. First, it was very cumbersome and it involved carrying the questions physically. We never had any incident of attack on them; but it was a lot of responsibility on the people who were saddled with that job. This year, because we realised that we needed to move forward and because it was increasingly becoming difficult to access our campuses daily, we have to resort to the use of ICT. So, the questions were transmitted in that mode. There was no printing of questions here go be carried to the campuses. That was done without any problem. What we are doing now will further guard against the likelihood of examination malpractice. At the Law School, we don’t preset questions and if questions have not been set, it cannot leak. We jokingly tell our students that if you see any questions around, you better don’t listen to those spreading them. The DG is the Chief Examiner and questions are determined on the day of an examination. So, you can see that it is almost impossible to say that questions that are not yet determined could leak, and that is why I say that it is one of our strength here. I know that a number of institutions are copying that now. Once you predetermine questions, you cannot be 100 percent sure that the sanctity of those questions will not be compromised. Going through your website, it was discovered that out of the about 47 universities listed as having a law faculty, only the University of Lagos has a full accreditation, while others have either provisional or other forms of accreditation. Why is this so? We don’t live in isolation. So, whatever we do in Nigeria has to be weighed or accessed, bearing in mind the international best practices. When we go on accreditation, we review our law faculties with indices that put them at par with universities anywhere in the world. That is how we came about the status of the University of Lagos. Many reasons, including its location in the commercial heartland of Nigeria give the University of Lagos the added advantage of having access to materials among others. Don’t forget that a teacher of law in the University of Lagos has access to far more things to engage in and to develop him than his counterpart in a more rural setting. That is one of the things that draw academics to the University of Lagos. In terms of staff, they have the best. In terms of number and spread, they have the best. They have the highest number of professors and other teaching staff, as well as the number. If you look at the facilities too, they rank best in that area. I did not attend the University of Lagos, and so, don’t think that I am praising them. But one has to say it the way it is. Be that as it may, we don’t want to rank our law faculties only to find out that they are not up to standard when viewed side by side with law faculties elsewhere. That is why the University of Olanrewaju Adesola Onadeko, a former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of the Republic of Gambia, was Secretary, Council of Legal Education and later, Deputy Director-General of the Nigerian Law School (NLS), Lagos campus. He later rose to the office of the Director General of the NLS on December 11, 2013. In this interview with TONY AKOWE and ERIC IKHILAE, Onadeko spokes on sundry issues, including the progress made so far by the institution and efforts being made to sustain the required standard in the teaching of law in the country. Excerpts: After a general review of the legal education terrain, it was decided that it was not in the interest of the profession to have law studied part time or by correspondence, because the study of law transcends the classroom and library somewhere. It is a total package… There is a lot to the training of a lawyer in using communication skills. They were found to be deficient in those who studied law by correspondence and other distant learning modules… ‘ ‘ Why Open University students can’t be lawyers — Law School D-G Adesola Onadeko INTERVIEW • Olanrewaju Onadeko Lagos is the only one that has really met that standard. The others that are not on the same level with UNILAG are not necessarily bad or not good enough. We are looking at the totality in terms of staffing and facilities, among others. Like you rightly observed, others have one form of ranking or the other. This is supposed to spur them, because there are things that we indicate in our accreditation reports sent back to the Vice-Chancellors and the Deans after its approval by our own council. Another thing that may rear its head later is the way that faculties of law are being established. It is way above the way we are training academics to man these faculties. By your own account, there are 47 faculties, I can tell you the number we have accredited, but I know that there are others that the council has not given any form of accreditation because they are new. When I was a student, there were only four law faculties in Nigeria. But you have counted 47, needless to say that we have not kept with pace in terms of staff development and training of staff to man these faculties. So, what we have is that once a faculty is established, it poaches from existing faculties, which themselves are yet to fully mature. And that is what has made it difficult for many of these faculties to attain the ranking of full accreditation which the University of Lagos has. We hope that things will continue to improve. I also observed that accreditation into law faculties in some universities, like the Madonna and University of Abuja, has been suspended. The implication is that they may not be allowed to admit students. Are you working in collaboration with JAMB to ensure that entrance examination is not conducted into the law programme of those schools? It is not only JAMB, because we are also in a good working relationship with the NUC. And if you look at the laws setting up these agencies, even though it is not stated there explicitly, the status envisages that they work in conjunction with institutions and agencies aligned with their main functions. That is what we are doing now and it is yielding some dividends. In fact, the NUC has informed the Registrar of JAMB and listed accredited law faculties in Nigeria, indicating the number of students they are expected to admit. This is the first time that is being done. Now, at the point of entry, there is control because JAMB has that and it will not grant you in excess of what the NUC has approved and the number indicated by the NUC is the number approved by the Council of Legal Education. You can see that for the first time, we are having the control, right from the entry point, a thing that was not there before. The case of Madonna you mentioned was so bad. Their quota is about 40 or 50 and they were admitting in excess of 700 and that is almost the carrying capacity of one campus of the Nigeria Law School. Even the University of Lagos that has full accreditation has a quota of 280. With all the resources in Lagos, they admit 280. How can Madonna admit 700? So, they precipitated the crisis for themselves and I know that the council and the NUC have brought in sanctions. The implication is that those students who are already in at the time of the sanction will be cleared out, but no further admission will be entertained for the period of that sanction. That is the way it has to be. You see, regulatory bodies must do their work and must do it properly, because not even the top- most universities in the world admit 700 students into a class. We should not water down the quality that the regulators of the institutions have built over the years. Graduates of the National Open University are not being admitted into the Law School. Why is this so? The issue is about rules and regulations. The Council for Legal Education is the regulatory body for legal education in Nigeria, and it is established by a statute, the Legal Education Act of 1962, as amended, and now the Legal Education Act of 2004 Laws of the Federation. The Open University and other institutions offering distance learning and correspondence programmes were specifically precluded by the Council of Legal Education and the Board of Benchers. The Body of Benchers is the body set up by law under the Legal Practitioners Act for the main purpose of admitting new lawyers to the Bar. They are the only body empowered by law to call lawyers to the Bar, while we are supposed to train them, conduct qualifying examination and issue them with qualifying certificates. The Body of Benchers will then consider them, based on their character, among other things, and if they are found worthy, then they will be called to the Bar. After a general review of the legal education terrain, it was decided that it was not in the interest of the profession to have law studied part time or by correspondence, because the study of law transcends the classroom and library somewhere. It is a total package. You must have heard about the law dinner at the Law School. These are part of the component parts of ethics and the general molding of a total lawyer that is beyond the classroom. There is a lot to the training of a lawyer in using communication skills. They were found to be deficient in those who studied law by correspondence and other distant learning modules. That was why these two bodies decided that if you want to study law, go into a properly-accredited law faculty and study law. You don’t study medicine by correspondence or in the Open University. It is the same with engineering and pharmacy, among others. Every profession has its own criteria of admitting those aspiring to enter the profession and that is what these two bodies empowered to regulate the profession have done. This has been communicated to the general public over and over again. There are advertorials on it and it is on our website and everybody is aware of this. If any institution decides on its own volition to proceed to run a course at variance with what the bodies set up by law to regulate the profession have stipulated, so be it. So, the issue does not even arise. You mentioned 47 law faculties, and in addition to that, we have students who studied abroad who come to the Law School. Nigerians now know that those coming in studied law fulltime abroad and we know the difference. The point is that everybody is aware that, just as you cannot say you are studying medicine by correspondence or distant learning, the Body of Benchers and the Council of Legal Education have determined that the study of law should be on full-time basis in institutions approved for such. So, I think that anyone who wants to study law should listen to these two bodies who have the power to determine those who enter the profession. There was a time when the idea of having a first degree in another discipline before going to study law was toyed with by the Council. Has that been suspended or is it still being considered? That is correct. I know of about two universities that started their law faculties by admitting graduates from other disciplines. If you look at what obtains elsewhere in the world, especially in England and Wales, there are other ways to get to study law. Those who have degrees in other areas are given faster route of achieving their aim of becoming lawyers. But don’t forget that every region has its own way of doing things. I know some universities toyed with the idea, but they found the idea difficult to sustain. People have asked me whether I will support law being made a graduate programme as it is in the USA, Australia and a few other places, and my answer is no. I did not study law as a graduate student. I studied law after my HSC and I don’t think that I have any deficiency before going abroad for my graduate studies. What I am trying to say is that I don’t think that we have gotten to that stage where we can afford to put that step between the study of law and those who want to study law. Students spend five years in law faculties to study law now. I don’t imagine that I want to see a student spending four years, then go for youth service and then come back to do another five years to study law and later go to the Law School. If you put that together, you will be getting about 11 years of study. That cannot be justified in our own situation for now. Don’t forget that things evolve. In the future, when we get there and the need arises for law to be made a graduate programme, I do think that those who are there will consider that. The Council of Legal Education has set up a committee to review the law curriculum as a result of concerns raised about the quality of our law graduates. What is the outcome of that exercise? The issue of the falling standard of our law graduates has been a source of concern to stakeholders in the profession. When you have a large number, with so many faculties of law, you find that when numbers are on the rise, standard will invariably be compromised in some cases. I think it is just the consequence of large numbers. The only ray of hope there is that in the midst of all this, we still produce top graduates in Nigeria who have continued to prove their worth anywhere in the world. When you look at our assessment of these students after completing their programme at the Law School, some of them come out tops and they continue in that fashion even after leaving us. I am about to do a reference for our last year’s best graduate to Harvard and Oxford and I have no doubt that she will be granted admission. Up there, we have them, but down below, one cannot deny the fact that there is cause for concern. But we are determined at the Nigeria Law School to ensure that we continue to enhance the standard. We are thinking of infusing communication skills into the training module at the Law School. One of the problems we know that we have is the use of English by Nigerian graduates, and English is our official language. It is not the fault of the Nigeria Law School and I will not totally put it at the door step of the universities. It has to do with the foundation. Don’t forget that if the foundation is weak, whatever you put on it is going to be affected. So, from next session, we are going to introduce the use of English via communication skills, so that we can brush up those who need to be brushed up and bring them up to the level necessary for entry into the profession. It is usual for Nigerians to want the government to do everything. In developed countries, Alumni play very important roles in the development of education. What has been the contribution of the Alumni to the development of this institution? At the celebration of our 50th anniversary last year, we engaged the Alumni of the Nigeria Law School and they responded very well. Don’t forget that there are very few lawyers in Nigeria today who are not products of the Nigeria Law School. What that means is that any lawyer you see anywhere in Nigeria would have attended this institution. In view of that, we have a hostel project going on right now in the institution, courtesy of the Katsina State government, and the governor is a lawyer. He certainly has come to the aid of the Nigeria Law School in our time of need and that hostel is going to give us an additional 250 bed spaces. We have similar projects coming up in other campuses. The 1986 and 1988 sets have done something for the school too. Other sets are doing one thing or the other. At the moment, we have about five or six governors and they have always contributed to our staff development. In the structured sense, the Alumni office is now established and even at the lowest end, there were services we were providing for our students. They are now required to make a modest contribution to the Alumni purse at the Law School. Any service you require thereafter will be offered. We hope that those funds, when deployed to facilities will be named after the Alumni. The Danjuma Foundation made a pledge during the 50th anniversary to renovate the Sir Ademola Adetokumbo Hall in Lagos and that is going on right now; the Kano State government in the Kano campus; the Adamawa State government in the Yola campus; the Bayelsa State government in Yenagoa, while the Enugu State government is doing something in the Enugu campus. The Law School is endowed to produce students who are going to be well-placed in the future and we will continue to develop them. Like you said, elsewhere in the world, Alumni are doing a lot in funding education and I think we are getting there. Won’t that affect the school fees? What will affect the school fees is when government divests totally. For example, the hostel being built, we don’t need to put pressure on government again to come and replicate the same thing. Whatever the Alumni group of the Nigeria Law School is giving, we don’t need to ask the government to replicate it. The actual fees paid here are just a fraction. But there are other services to be rendered. For example, every student must get two copies of Law and Practice journal before leaving here and that has to be paid for by the students. We have the law dinner and before any student leaves the school, he must have at least three law dinners, which have to be paid for. You can see what is happening nationwide now; even state governments have realised the need to look into what students pay and are bringing in some increases that you see students reacting. Are we likely to see an increase in fees soon? No. But don’t forget that we are frugally expected to expend that money. And when students pay for the journals, we don’t have to go out and produce at a rate that would make it difficult for them to subscribe to. The law dinners are training sessions for the lawyers. You have two campuses in the northern states exposed to insecurity. What security measures have you put in place in those campuses and are you considering a temporary shut down until the situation improves? Security has become a very important issue in our national life in Nigeria. The things we use to take for granted are no longer taken for granted. It is true that our campuses in Yola and Kano are situated in places that are most affected by insecurity and the activities of the insurgents. But don’t forget that life in some cities is still normal. If one bears in mind that there are insurgents and their activities are on, we still must note that there are Nigerians living peacefully and carrying out their endeavours in these cities. That is why we have done everything we can and within our powers to ensure that we fortify our security. We have contacted the Inspector General of Police and the Chief of Defence Staff and they have responded positively. We have been reaping the result of their intervention. We are almost through with the fencing of these two institutions. The Kano campus had no fence whatever because we inherited the Bagauda Lake Hotel premises for use. At a great cost to us, we have almost completed the fencing. The same thing applies to Yola. These two projects are priority projects to us and we are almost through with the fencing. Another important thing is the awareness of the staff and students. No matter how much technology you have deployed, at the end of the day, it is the human being that will complement and make this technology work. There is a very high level awareness drive and everybody is at alert. I know that parents and guardians will be concerned. But let me assure them that everything has been done and will continue to be done. We are keeping in pace and getting reports from the security agents. You spoke about the dress code for lawyers and I know that in some parts of the world, lawyers don’t wear these wig and gown. Why have we stuck to this old tradition we inherited from the British? Don’t forget that the law profession, as we have it in Nigeria, was brought to us by the British. And so, we got it from the source. The traditions of the profession have stayed with us since then. The costumes we wear are symbolic of the profession and the practice of law. It is true that there are countries that have modified their own. South Africa has done away with the wig, but they still use the gown and the beams. In the US, they have made away with the gown and just dress down. In Australia, they still use the wig and gown and in many other countries. I think it is symbolic. The need for change will be informed by those who are in the profession. For now, I don’t think that we have seen the need for any change. If the need arises in the future, it will be addressed.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 11:08:54 +0000
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