In this interview with AMEH EJEKWONYILO, he spoke on a wide range of issues, including the challenges confronting legal education in the country, the future of law practice in Nigeria and sundary issues. What has been your experience as an academic and a practicing lawyer? It has been worthwhile as it has helped me shape my philosophy of legal educa­tion. You know that I was in legal prac­tice at Aba from 1985 to 2000 when I left Aba to head the Nigerian Law School campus at Enugu. I returned to full time legal practice in 2014. I strongly believe that a meaningful goal for legal educa­tion is to prepare students to become competent lawyers conscious of ethics and social justice. A combined experi­ence from the field and classroom is very rewarding as a practitioner, a teacher, education manager and as a reformist. As a Law Professor and Senior Advo­cate of Nigeria (SAN), would you say the teaching of Law is different from the practice of law in the country? Yes there is a wide divergence between what we teach and what we do in prac­tice. The reason for this is because our legal education is a failure. The Law Fac­ulties do not have clearly set out goals for legal education. This was also the case with the Nigerian Law School until 2008. Our law teachers lack the capacity to implement the best practices for legal education. Our legal education has also been influenced by our early demarca­tion between teaching law at the univer­sity purely as a liberal art and then teach­ing law as a vocation at the Nigerian Law School. This is what I describe as the oil and water approach. So there is a foun­dational dysfunction. The lawyers we produce are not prepared for legal prac­tice. We also have the contents of what we teach sometimes divergent from what we do in practice. This is more on ethics. There is serious and deep rooted indiscipline in the profession yet the only thing we teach students at the Law School is the high standard of integrity and conduct expected of a lawyer. When our graduates step out of the Law School they are confronted with massive decay in the profession in reality. What are some of the challenges con­fronting the effective teaching of Law in the country’s universities? We have a situation where we teach without any goal. I always liken this to playing a football match without the goal mouth/posts. The present teach­ing method of mainly dictating notes to students in many law faculties or purely teaching law as a liberal art sub­ject is contrary to best practices. Our law teachers lack the capacity to be effective teachers. There is heavy imbalance in the teacher-students ratio. Many Law Fac­ulties lack the basic infrastructure for modern education. Many teachers are not committed to their jobs and we have a situation where massive corruption and sexual abuse of students dictate. Our legal education leaders and professional association pay lip service to reform of legal education in the Country. What does the Nigerian Law School do differently from the various Faculties of Law in our universities? The Nigerian Law School is meant to prepare law graduates for the vocation of law. Since the reform of legal educa­tion in the Nigerian Law School in 2008, the School is making some attempts to adopt the best practices such as using outcome based lessons, integrating skills and values with knowledge and practic­ing limited interactive teaching method­ology. But the Law School is still very far from adopting the best practices in legal education. The training is still heavily stadium based lessons and though the subjects are vocational based subjects, there is little exposure and training of students for the vocation of law. What is the future of the legal profes­sion in Nigeria in terms of the attitude of young lawyers to the practice of the profession? In terms of competence, ethics and justice, the future of the legal profession is very bleak. Do you know that ethics is not part of the training modules at the five years Bachelor of Laws programme of the universities? And ethics is taught at the Nigerian Law School for a few hours in the one year programme? At both the Law Faculties and at the Nige­rian Law School, there is no justice goal for legal education. Students are mainly focused to learn and reproduce the defi­nitions, and principles of substantive law and procedure. We are not preparing jus­tice lawyers. We are not preparing ethi­cal lawyers. The National Universities Commission just produced new Bench­marks Statements for the LLB Degree programme of the universities and again as it was in 1989 nothing is mentioned about ethics. Yet we are complaining that the legal profession is corrupt. But ethi­cal lawyers are not born, they are made. Do the provisions of the 1999 Consti­tution supersede the provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015? Yes it does where there is conflict. The Constitution prevails against any other law where there is conflict. Sir on the issue of bail, can bail be granted on ‘Self-Recognition’? Recently, I read newspapers and listened to TV broadcasts which an­nounced that certain defendants on criminal charges were granted bail on ‘self-recognition.’ Almost all our Na­tional newspapers said the same thing in the case of bail for former Minister Abba Moro. I took this casually since I know that non-lawyers tend to corrupt “lawyer language” sometimes. However, I became alarmed when I heard some lawyers grant some of those bizarre ex­planatory TV interviews right out of court, and the lawyers actually used the word or phrase ‘self-recognition.’ This I put on inquiry and embarked on interviewing lawyers myself on their understanding of the phrase, ‘bail on self-recognition.’ Over 55% of lawyers I interviewed actually thought that the phrase ‘self-recognition’ meant ‘self-rec­ognisance’. Three young lawyers actually told me that they were taught ‘self –rec­ognition’ at the Nigerian Law School by the teachers and that it was in fact in the text books they used. I then proceeded to research the text books being used at the Nigerian Law School. I found that none of the three text books used the phrase ‘self-recognition.’ Two actually used the phrase ‘self-recognisance’ while one mentioned the word ‘recognisance’ only once. I put a call to four teachers at the Nigerian Law School and six teach­ers at different Law Faculties. Six out of the nine teachers thought that the word/phrase ‘self-recognition’ meant ‘self-recognizance.’ So I concluded that our students have actually been taught “self-recognition.” Otherwise, how come all the newspa­pers used the same phrase ‘self-recogni­tion?’ I have not looked at any judge’s re­cords to know if any has used this phrase but I have seen lawyers (older lawyers at the bar inclusive) grant their stepping-out-of-court interviews on TV and they used the phrase ‘self-recognition.’ So I concluded that our lawyers are to blame for this ignorance; this misinformation, and misuse of language!. The Administration of Justice Act uses the word ‘recognizance.’ The Criminal Procedure Act uses the word ‘recog­nizance.’ ‘Recognition’ and ‘Recogni­sance’ are two English words meaning totally different things. The word ‘rec­ognition’ does not mean ‘recognisance’. ‘Recognition’ means “the act of remem­bering who somebody is when you see them, or of identifying what something is.” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dic­tionary). The word ‘recognisance’ is “a promise by somebody who is accused of a crime to appear in court on a par­ticular date”(Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary). Black’s Law Dictionary calls ‘recognisance’ “a bond or obliga­tion, made in court by which a person promises to perform some act or observe some condition, such as to appear when called…” Though the origin of ‘recogni­sance’ is the old French word “recon­naissance” which earlier derived from ‘reconnaitre’ (recognise), for many cen­turies the English word ‘recognisance’ has been translated as “engagement” in French and ‘personal recognisance’ as ‘caution personnelle’. The word ‘self-recognition’ is used in the medical dictionary in two forms. One defines the word itself as “the pro­cess by which the immune system of an organism distinguishes between the body’s own chemicals, cells, and tis­sues and those of foreign organisms or agents”. The other medical usage is asso­ciated with the “mirror self-recognition test (MSR). The word or phrase ‘self-recognisance’ is even broken English. The correct English phrase is ‘own rec­ognisance’ or ‘personal recognisance.’ The Black’s Law Dictionary has clearly defined the phrase ‘personal recogni­sance’ as “the release of a defendant in a criminal case in which the court takes the defendant’s word that he or she will appear for a scheduled matter or when told to appear. This type of release dis­penses with the necessity of the person’s posting money or having a surety sign a bond with the court.” Our courts can grant bail on ‘own recognisance’ or ‘per­sonal recognisance’ (not self-recogni­sance). Our courts cannot grant bail on “self-recognition” Moving away from bail, the US Pres­ident appoints Justices of the Supreme Court, and it has been widely said that in America, the nine Justices of the court are ideologically divided along party lines of the Republicans and the Democrats. What is your perspective on the appointment or elevation of Jus­tices to the Nigerian Supreme Court against the American background? Yes, in the US the President appoints Justices of the Supreme Court. In Ni­geria, our President also appoints the Justices of the Supreme Court but based on the recommendation of the National Judicial Council. While it is easy to pick Justices based on ideological lines (not necessarily party lines) in the US be­cause the President solely appoints and Senate ratifies, it would not be easy to pick Nigerian Justices based on ideo­logical lines since the recommenders are many in the organ, National Judi­cial Council. In the US the ideological lines are mainly between conservatives and liberals. I have a feeling that ours guarantees better independence for the judiciary. Is there any similarity in our judicial system with that of the US? Well to an extent yes. You know both legal systems generally have their roots in the English Legal System. There has been a suggestion from stakeholders in the country’s judiciary that Senior Advocates of Nigeria should be appointed to the Supreme Court Bench. What do you make of that? Yes, that is positive. Actually in places like England and Wales, most appoint­ments to the High Courts and above are from the ranks of Queens Counsel, equivalent to our Senior Advocates. I would even say that the suggestion to have our SANs appointed directly to the Supreme Court should not be restricted to SANs alone. Very good and experi­enced lawyers who are not SANs should also be considered. Some of our best Su­preme Court Justices including a Chief Justice had come directly from the Bar or the classroom like in the cases of Elias CJN and Justice Augustine Nnamani.]]>