Law Graduates: We Still Await Response from Council of Legal Education — NOUN

The National Open University of Nigeria says It is still awaiting a response from the Council of Legal Education as regards admitting NOUN graduates into the Nigerian Law School.

The Vice-Chancellor of NOUN, Prof. Abdalla Adamu, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos.

Adamu said following the removal from NOUN enabling law of the clauses – correspondence and part-time – which had generated the assumption that it was a part-time school and its law graduates wouldn’t be able to go to law school, NOUN notified the council of the development.

He said: “Correspondence and part-time are the modes of delivery, but that does not mean the university is part-time.

“The law establishing the university said that the university is to deliver via multiple means, including CDs, tape, correspondence and part-time, so it is not part-time university at all.

“Because of moral mandate, the university decided to remove the correspondence and part-time from the law.

“Thankfully, the National Assembly was able to do that, and by December 7, 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the law.”

Adamu said following the development, the university wrote to the Council of Legal Education to inform it and clarify the misunderstanding arising from the correspondence and part-time clauses.

He said since then, the institution was still awaiting response from the council.

He said: “The purpose of any university is to provide grounded theory in any discipline.

“We don’t produce accountants, but we teach accounting.

“We don’t produce nurses, but we teach nursing.

“So, we don’t produce lawyers, but we teach law.

“If law graduates from this institution are prevented from going to the next level upon graduation, it is between them and the law school, not NOUN.

“Ours is to teach them law according to National Universities Commission guideline, and we have done that.”

According to Adamu, the NUC sent officials to inspect NOUN law programme and the university was given full accreditation.

The vice -chancellor said those who accredited the programme were lawyers and professors of law.

The Chairman of the Council of Legal Education, Chief Emeka Ngige (SAN), had recently said the council, being conscious of standard of education, resolved that products of part-time, evening law and open law programmes would not be admitted into the Nigerian Law School.

Ngige, however, said the Director-General of Nigerian Law School, Prof. Isa Ciroma, had suggested that NOUN graduates should be admitted into Bar Part 1 instead of Bar Part 2.

According to Ngige, NOUN graduates will have to run the Bar Part 1 for a full academic calendar year in place of three months, which foreign students use.

He said when such students would have passed Bar Part 1 examination, he or she would be admitted to do Bar Part 2.

He said failing the examination would mean not doing Bar Part 2, adding that there would no chance of rewriting the Bar Part 1 examination.