Boosting employment opportunities for lawyers

When lawyers gather, be it in the hal­lowed bowels of the court and tribu­nals halls where they slug it out to resolve the mystery of legal cases or at work­shops, seminars or learned conferences where they dig deep into the foundation, practice and interpretation of Law, the attitude, colour and character of their gathering are always the same: some serious business. The recently concluded 48th Conference of the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) was no exemption to this norm and time-tested prac­tice.

It was serious business right from the opening ceremonies when the frontline le­gal icon and Founder of Afe Babalola Uni­versity, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Aare Afe Ba­balola, SAN and the Hon. Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad of the Supreme Court addressed the Law Teachers and wittingly or unwittingly set the agenda for this year’s Conference. As it were, majority of what the duo said at the opening ceremonies later formed the pith of the deliberations of the Conferees and the meat of their com­munique.

In tandem with the theme for the Con­ference “Mainstreaming Interdisciplinary Approach to Legal Education: Imperatives for the Development of Nigeria”, Babalola, a man who roars where angels tremble to whisper, frontally tackled such conten­tious issues as the place and import of Law Teachers as experts and specialists in Law, funding of quality Education, admis­sion into Colleges/Faculties of Law, the running of the Law School, Interdisciplin­ary Approach to Legal Education and ap­pointment of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) as well as Extension of Funds to Non- Profit Private Universities. Such weighty is­sues could not have escaped the powerful rays of his searchlight.

For example, Babalola would not fathom why it is difficult for Nigeria to step up the current allocation of about 7% of its na­tional budget to fund education to meet the UNESCO recommendation of at least 25% of the national budget of every country should be dedicated to education, the fact that it has to grapple with other matters such as health care delivery, security and infrastructural development as well as funding of education notwithstanding.

He would not be taken in on why the annu­al budget of $7,130,137,243 which translates to N1,212,123,331,310 for North California State University in 2012 could be more than the Federal Government of Nigeria’s budget of N495,456,130,065 for 50 Federal Universi­ties and UBE (Universal Basic Education) which translates to 40.88% of the budget al­location of American University within the same time frame.

As for the Hon. Justice Muhammad who stood in for the Chief Justice of Nigeria, the Hon. Justice Mahmoud Muhammad, he counselled all lawyers, Judges, Law teachers and indeed all stakeholders in the legal pro­fession to play significant roles in sanitizing the legal profession by identifying and flush­ing out all the bad eggs in order to restore the dignity and honour that had been the hall­mark of the noble profession in yester years.

According to Muhammad, the legal pro­fession has been facing a lot of challenges from within and from without as a result of “bad eggs amongst (some) practicing law­yers, (some Judges) and even from Academ­ics” and therefore implored the Law teach­ers, whom he described as “a collection of great minds who have the onerous responsi­bility of moulding the character and minds of students, for positive contributions to the political development of this country”.

After four days of rigorous and pains­taking sessions and copious drinking from the fountain of experience and knowledge of some erudite Judicial Officers of note, seasoned Legal Practitioners and Legal Academics from all over the world, the Law Teachers, through the communique at the end of their 48th Conference, returned a unanimous verdict that a lot still needs to be done to make the wheel of justice run faster and smoother in the overall interest of the administration of justice in Nigeria.

Determined to insulate Law graduates from the ever expanding unemployment market, the Association advocated for an immediate expansion and reformation of the curriculum of legal education in Nige­ria to accommodate new areas of market economics and developmental studies such as Agriculture, Medical Science, Physiol­ogy, Nursing, Sociology, Psychology and Marketing among others, reasoning that such immediate expansion and reforma­tion of the curriculum will guarantee rapid development of the different spheres of the society and make law graduates employ­able in different fields of human endeavor.

In addition to the above, they advocated that a new curriculum with respect to cy­ber-law should be developed for Nigerian Universities in keeping with the practice in other jurisdictions, such as the United States and the United Kingdom to enable Nigerian trained lawyers handle the in­creasing legal challenges thrown up by the fast growing cyber technology.

Considering the importance of Informa­tion and Communication Technology in the 21st Century and the concomitant phenom­enon of rapid globalization, it is imperative for Nigeria to facilitate the development of information and knowledge-based economy through the instrumentality of law. Conse­quently, Information Technology law should be carried out as a law course to be taught in the penultimate law of the basic law pro­gramme in all Faculties/Colleges of Law in Nigerian Universities.

To make Nigerian lawyers really relevant in the competitive global market, there is the need for Nigerian Universities to ensure that undergraduate students, especially in Law, undergo entrepreneurial training to endow them with skill and competences that can empower them to be self-employed and sharpen their capacity to have legitimate sources/streams of income. Legal educa­tion in Nigeria must strive to achieve syner­gy between the law graduate and the society in such a way that our universities will not just be turning out job seekers who become stranded when there is no vacancy in both the public and private sectors.

In addition to the above, there is an urgent need to re-evaluate and re-engineer the Nigerian postgraduate education in Law in terms of de­signing more suitable research methodologies with a view to accommodating new frontiers of knowledge, Information and Communication Technology as well as entrepreneurial studies. This would in turn ensure response to current realities, global competitiveness and relevance.

With multi-disciplinary training, Lawyers can be gainfully engaged in Advocacy, as Solici­tors or in Educational and Research Institutes where the likes of Prof. Ben Nwabueze, Prof. Itse Sagay, Prof. G. A. Olawoyin, Prof. I.O Ag­bede and Prof. P.A. Oluyede as well as Prof. Ayo Ajomo among many others have made indelible marks.

Olofintila wrote from Lagos