Ajuluchukwu Eze Disagrees With Senate Over Creation of Six Additional Law School Campuses

Former Publicity Secretary of  Nigerian Bar Association Abuja, Ajuluchukwu Eze, has lent his voice in opposition to the resolution of the Senate to establish six more law schools across the country.

It would be recalled that the Senate, today, approved the establishment of six more campuses of the Nigerian Law School in addition to the existing campuses in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Yola, Yenagoa and Kano.

Reacting to the development, the lawyer described the decision as a misplaced priority, identifying underfunding as the major problem of the Nigerian law school which the establishment of more campuses will worsen.

He contrasted the quality of legal education in its early days with present times and decried the dwindling fortunes of the institution.

“There is no doubt that legal education in Nigeria is not at its best compared to how it used to be in the early years of the Nigerian Law School when we had just the Lagos Campus.”

He also noted that “The number of university law graduates awaiting law school necessitated the need for creation of more law school campuses. Even though many will disagree with this and rather attribute it to the selfishness of a past Head of State not to allow his ward go far away from Abuja custody that led to the creation of Abuja campus of the Nigerian Law School.”

He further remarked in a statement made available to thenigerialawyer.com that the existing six campuses already serve the purpose of absorbing undergraduate students into the school but have also raised the challenge of funding and maintenance of facilities.

“No doubt the new campuses of Abuja, Kano and Enugu served the desired purpose of absorbing more students into the law school but not without the failure of providing and expanding the facility needed for proper and adequate legal education.”

As if the problem was not enough, the Yenegoa and Yola campuses came on board. Today all the campuses are under maintained, under funded and lacking the necessary infrastructure to qualify remotely as a place for training our lawyers, and future judicial officers.”

According to him, creating new campuses of the Nigerian Law School would be adding salt to injury as it would worsen the problem of inadequate funding resulting in the deterioration of the learning environments.

“Now to add salt to injury, the senate wants six more law school campuses in addition to the already under funded existing six campuses of the Nigerian Law School.

In my opinion, there is no need for all this law schools, the funds rather would have been better utilized if it is channeled towards expanding and improving the facilities in the already existing law schools.

This can only be the sane thing to do at this time.

Creating more law schools is not a problem, if the need arises, it will be created but for now it is absolutely needless and unnecessary and I urge all well meaning persons who look forward to a well funded and improved legal education in Nigeria to rise up and challenge this bill.”