NOUN not created to produce lawyers says Don

A former Dean of Law at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and former member of the Council of Legal Education, Professor Oyelowo Oyewo, has said the Law programme at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) was not established to produce lawyers.

Oyewo, who spoke with Nigerian Tribune in his office at the weekend, described as appropriate, the decision of the Council of Legal Education to bar NOUN graduates from proceeding to the Law School.

“The National Open University is imparting legal knowledge, not for the purposes of producing lawyers,” he said.

“It is imparting knowledge for people to have an idea of the law and to render paralegal services. The kind of training we are giving here is not the kind of training they are giving at the Open University. They are totally miles apart.

“All you have to do is check the material they put on the website; it doesn’t even come close to what we are doing here. I have checked them out on the subject that I teach.”

The Council of Legal Education has repeatedly maintained that NOUN’s law graduates are not eligible for further training at the Law School, because of the institution’s “part-time” mode of study – a claim which the university management has refuted.

When contacted via the telephone on Sunday, the Dean of the School of Law of NOUN,, Professor Justus Sokefun, said he would not respond until he had heard from Oyewo himself.