Unbundle Law School – Don
A practicing lawyer and publisher, Barrister Sylvester Ihmanobe, has called on the federal government to unbundle the Nigerian Law School and allow for private law schools.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Daily Trust over the weekend in Abuja, Ihmanobe said that the NLS is currently facing multi-faceted challenges coming on the heels of the mass failure during the last bar examinations.
He mentioned the challenge from the Council of Legal Education (CLE) which is the regulatory authority, the NLS (operator) and the students.
According to him, it is only in the law profession that we find that the regulator and the operator are the same. The CLE ought to be the regulator of the NLS, but as it is, there is an anomaly and the opposite is the case.
“The secretary to the CLE should not aspire to be the DG NLS, because it can be likened to a situation whereby the Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission (NUC) aspires to be the vice chancellor of university. Instead of having the CLE to be separate you find that they are fused in such a way that the NLS has even taken precedence,” he said.
On the students, he said that the invention of the internet and other digital devices have shortened the time of concentration of the average law student, adding that instead of reading students want to use internet for other things.
Law, according to him, requires understanding and maturity, more of intelligence than memory.
He mentioned that NLS is a vocational institution where students are trained on how it is done.
“The federal government should allow private institutions to train candidates to write the bar final examination. If we can have private law schools just like we can train medical doctors. As at today we have over 22 private institutions that have law faculties. The vocational study of law can also be handled by private law schools because the number of law school students is getting too large, this idea will also be the solution to the problem of backlog.
“I always dislike a situation where students pass out but do not get admission into the NLS because we know that this is a profession that puts premium on seniority.
“Your classmates in the university who you finished together become 3 or 4 years your senior, not out of your own fault but because of admission and that seniority will be there forever.
“So there is need to unbundle law school itself so that the CLE comes as a regulatory body,” he said.