In Defence Of The New Law School Campuses

By Anthony S. Aladekomo

The ongoing debate on the proposed six new campuses for the Nigerian Law School was provoked in October 2021 when Senator Smart Adeyemi (representing Kogi West) introduce a Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) (Amendment) Bill at the Senate. The Nigerian Law School currently has six campuses. The latest and correct version of the Bill, acknowledged by Senator Adeyemi, lists the six new campuses as Kabba in Kogi State for the North Central, Maiduguri in Borno State for the North-East, Argungu in Kebbi State for the North-West, Okija in Anambra State for the South-East, Orogun in Delta State for the South-South and Ilawe Ekiti in Ekiti State for the South-West. The Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) (Amendment) Bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters. The committee organised a public hearing on it. Stakeholders at the public hearing submitted memoranda and/or spoke on their views on the Bill. The Senate deemed the Bill meritorious because of “the exponential increase in the number of law graduates from our universities and foreign ones.”

The Nigerian Law School today has a functioning campus in each of the six geo-pol zones in the country. Then, it was suddenly announced in June 2021 that the Attorney-General of the Federation and the Council of Legal Education had approved the request of the lawyer Governor of Rivers State, Mr. Nyesom Wike, to construct a new campus for the Law School in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The oil-rich State government said it put it upon itself to do that because, according to it, it had been earlier unjustly denied of the campus meant for the South-South.

The old and the new law faculties and colleges of law in our universities have never lacked applicants because majority of the arts students in our senior secondary schools yearly make law their first choice in their Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) applications. Moreover, almost every educated family in Nigeria today wants to have a lawyer. Though the legal labour space is apparently saturated, the body language or apparent position of each of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Council of Legal Education is that it does not have the power to deny any Nigerian university the right to have a law faculty if it meets the conditions for approval. The Law School today simply admits the number of law graduates it has facilities for and leave the rest to their fate; almost all the rest practically beg, lobby, pray and weep to get Law School application forms to no avail every year. At least, the Abuja and Lagos campuses have exhausted their capacity. Even if the existing and functioning campuses could expand their facilities, the current problem of space would resurface in few years, which was partly the reason why the Port Harcourt campus, rather than expansion of the existing campuses, was recently embarked upon. Availability of space is exacerbated by the tendency of most law faculties in the country to overshoot the Law School quotas given them by the Council of Legal Education. Matters are similarly compounded by the fact that the university admission quotas usually given to law faculties by the NUC are usually far more than those given by the Council for the purpose of entrance into the Law School. So, new Law School campuses, with great potentials for expansion many years or decades to come, are considered necessary by some stakeholders who know the depth of the problem and refuse to pretend about it.

The foregoing facts and figures were apparently factored in in October 2021 as Senator Smart Adeyemi introduced the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) (Amendment) Bill at the Senate. Accordingly, the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) (Amendment) Bill was passed by the Senate in February 2022. This was done after a careful consideration and adoption of the report on the Bill submitted by the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters. Section 1 (3) of the Bill provides that “There shall be established, at least two (2) campuses in each of the six (6) geo-political zones as specified in the schedule to this Bill”. Section 1 (4) provides that the “Council may, subject to the approval of the President, increase the number of campuses whenever the need to do so arises.”

Many Nigerians across the country hailed the passage of the Bill by the Senate. Some stakeholders, who had been fastidious over the Bill from inception, however castigated the upper chamber of the National Assembly for passing it. The aim of this article is to x-ray their arguments and, with due regard, show that they are superficial, myopic, weak and untenable. One of their arguments is that what is needed is more funding and not new campuses. The Chairman of the Council of Legal Education, Chief Emeka Ngige, SAN, and the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr. Olumide Akpata, have been very vocal in stating that what is needed for the Nigerian Law School is not the establishment of more campuses but the funding of the existing ones. While Chief Ngige lamented “the deplorable state of the Yenagoa campus”, Mr. Akpata stated that the Senate should rather work for the appropriation of more funds for the Law School. This appears to be a good point. A Bar Part II student in the Nigerian Law School pays a total of =N=316,000: 00 for the single session that his programme entails. Some stakeholders in the Nigerian legal education and legal profession consider this as too small and far below the value that the student gets in the Law School. This observation sounds reasonable, because an average law student in the Nigerian private universities pays =N=1,200,000: 00 per session. In a nutshell, like in the case of all Nigerian public universities, training in the Nigerian Law School is being heavily subsidised by the Nigerian government.

However, while it may be convenient to sound alarm that the internally generated revenue in the Nigerian Law School is too low to cater for the Law School or vocational legal education there, it is also true that the Law School, which is under the Ministry of Justice, gets its own chunk of funds from the annual budget of the Federal Government. In fact, neither the Council of Legal Education nor the management of the Law School is allowed to unilaterally spend a kobo from its internally generated revenue. This is because section 9 of the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) Act provides that all “fees collected by the Council from the students of the Nigerian Law School shall be paid into the Treasury of the Government of the Federation and shall form part of the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.” So, the internally generated revenue accruing to the Law School is hardly relevant to its budgetary allocation. Budgetary allocations to educational and research institutions are normally not based on the revenue that they generate, because of their peculiar nature. They may not generate huge revenue with immediate effect, but, in the long run, they are the producers of all the manpower in the country that generates direct or huge revenue. This is what the Law School “stakeholders”, now holding brief for the Federal Government that it does and cannot have funds for new Law School campuses, should realise and enlighten the Federal Government about. In fact, compared to the Nigerian public universities, the Nigerian Law School is still far better funded. That is why, unlike their colleagues in the public universities, the Law School lecturers have never gone on a strike. At any rate, a case is herein made for better funding of the Law School and even of all public universities. To be specific, the Tertiary Education Fund (TETFund) should be made to come to the aid of the Law School with the billions of naira yearly lying idle in its coffers. It can conveniently fund the establishment of the new campuses and upgrade the old ones.

Accordingly, it is submitted that it is fallacious to insist that the Law School should not have more campuses, even when the need arises now, just because the existing ones are not being ideally funded. It is tantamount to saying that human beings should no longer procreate because every human being will eventually die. It is also like saying that a person should not eat because a good part of what he eats will eventually be excreted. The better thing for the stakeholders to do is to prevail on government to increase funding for the Law School for its holistic health—refurbishing of the existing campuses and establishment of the new ones needed. It is a notorious fact that there is a backlog of law graduates in all States of the federation. They remain sad and at home because they could not get a space in the existing campuses of the Law School. Every year, the backlog is swelling because the colleges of law and faculties of law being established in our ever-increasing new private and public universities are churning out law graduates. If the existing campuses could accommodate those law graduates or they could be expanded to accommodate them, why has that not been done all these years? For the avoidance of doubt, the problem of inadequate space in the Law School has been in and with the Law School now for many years. Why pretending and postponing the evil day even when the Senate has boldly come out to eliminate that evil? Why did those now crying of acute shortage of funds for the Law School keep quiet all these years? Why vilifying the senators who have now mustered the political will and courage to bring the problem of the Law School to the limelight with a solution? Why cannot the Council of Legal Education synergise with the Senate to establish the really needed new Law School campuses and get them funded adequately henceforth?

Why should any stakeholder in the Law School turn himself into a spokesperson for the Federal Government and be telling us that it does not have the needed funds for the Law School? If government really does not have funds, where did the hundreds of public officers being prosecuted or investigated today for embezzlement of public funds get the loot? For how many years now has Nigeria been spending =N=120 billion annually on the staff and facilities of its oil refineries that have been refining no oil? Is it not more reasonable for the self-proclaimed stakeholders to ask government to block all such loot and waste and invest it on the Law School and other key areas than holding brief for the government and telling Nigerians that it does not have funds? Where else should a responsible government invest if not in its youths who are called the leaders of tomorrow?

The statistics staring us all in the face does show that the Law School does not only need more funds but new campuses. You may be correct if you say it needs more funds to maintain its existing infrastructure in the six functioning campuses, but it is also true that it needs funds for establishing new campuses. Nigeria currently has about 200 universities and close to half of them have faculties or colleges of law. Osun State alone has seven of those universities’ faculties of law. Two of them, Obafemi Awolowo University and the Osun State University, are public, respectively belonging to the Federal Government and the State Government. The remaining five are private. In fact, two of those five private ones are in the same town. Four faculties of law are in Lagos State alone while another four are in neighbouring Ogun State. Courtesy of the unbridled generosity of the National Universities Commission (NUC), more private and public universities are springing up annually in every part of the country. The verification or approval of the law programme of these new universities has become almost a monthly assignment of the NUC and the Council of Legal Education. There are reasons to predict that most of the 20 private universities recently approved by the NUC on a single day would sooner or later seek approval for colleges of law. As recent as February 2022, the Inspector-General of Police visited the Chief Justice of Nigeria, urging him to support his desire to see cadets from the Nigerian Police Academy being given admission in the Law School. The newly established Army, Navy and Air Force Universities may follow suite. The functioning six campuses of the Law School currently accommodate only 6,510 students. When it becomes functional, the Port Harcourt campus under construction will accommodate 1,200 students only. Thus, all the existing six campuses and the one under construction would be able to accommodate only 7,710 students. But the number of Nigerian law graduates that currently seek admission to the Law School every year is far more than that, and those who will seek admission there in the next five years will more than double that. Considering the foregoing statistics and the fact that some universities already have as many as 300 as their quota for the Law School, the Federal, State, private, military and para-military universities from each of the 36 States of the Federation will be producing about 500 law graduates in about five years from now. That means that the law graduates that would be seeking admission into the Law School by then would be about 18,000, apart from those who would be coming from overseas universities! Would not we prepare for the coming rainy days? In fact, it is submitted that a stakeholders’ summit needs to be convoked to ruminate on all these facts and figures as the Law School clocks 60 this year 2022.

Should the Federal Government, NUC and the Council of Legal Education keep approving faculties and colleges of law for the new private, Federal and State universities being established yearly in the country without making a corresponding preparation for the training of their products in vocational legal education? Have we so soon forgotten or are we oblivious of the pains that the graduates of some universities have experienced over the years because they had no place in the Law School at the right time? If you had been a victim of such a situation or were close to a classmate or former student of yours who ever experienced it, you would easily realise that it is not a good experience at all. If you experienced such a thing, you would not oppose the current move to prepare for the future of the upcoming law graduates. You did not even have to have experienced it before you would have human feelings. Only a clueless and shortsighted leadership of any country will proliferate university law faculties and shut the gate of the Law School against their products. Any country that does that is consciously or unconsciously setting a time-bomb, that will one day detonate with attendant youth revolution. So, the Bill in question should not be whimsically and capriciously dismissed by the ‘stakeholders’ without examining the mischief it seeks to cure.

Some stakeholders, who include the Council of Legal Education, have also opposed the Senate Bill for the opening of new campuses for the Law School because, according to them, that would be tantamount to the usurpation of the powers of the Council of Legal Education. They reason that establishing new campuses are supposed to be administrative duties of the Council. They have however not cited any provisions of the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) Act or any other law that exclusively vest such powers or duties in the Council.

With due respect, I submit that the argument that any new law or statutory provision that creates new campuses for the Law School would be a usurpation of the functions of the Council of Legal Education is theoretical and a mere academic exercise. How would an Act that would simply codify the locations of the existing and the new campuses of the Law School be a usurpation of the powers of the Council of Legal Education? It has to be noted that, apart from naming the old and the proposed campuses of the Law School, section 1 (4) of the Bill under consideration still provides that the “Council may, subject to the approval of the President, increase the number of campuses whenever the need to do so arises.” Does the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) Act (LECA) really give exclusive untouchable powers to create new campuses for the Law School to the Council of Legal Education? Is such a power inherent, administrative or statutory? It is indisputable that the LECA is an Act or deemed Act of the National Assembly, which consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. At least, no section of the LECA expressly provides that only the Council can suggest, order or create a new campus for the Law School. Assuming without conceding that the LECA provides that only the Council can establish a new campus for the Law School, can such a provision be immutable, unamendable or sovereign? Is the Act not subject to the powers of the National Assembly to amend its own laws? Is the familiar legislative presumption that no law enacted by Parliament can bind the hands of a future Parliament no longer part of our jurisprudence? In a nutshell, the National Assembly has not just inherent jurisdiction but express powers under section 4 (2) of and item 49 of Part I of the Second Schedule to the 1999 Nigerian Constitution to amend or even repeal any Act, including the one in question.

The argument in some quarters that the senators are out to dole out constituency projects to their electorate is also weak and untenable. In fact, it is baseless regarding the sponsor of the Bill. Mr. Smart Adeyemi, the sponsor of the Bill, has not named his hometown as one of the proposed campuses. He wants the North Central campus sited in Kabba in Kabba/Buni Local Government Area of Kogi State, whereas he is from Iyara in Ijumu Local Government Area of the State. This altruistic step is very unusual of members of our National Assembly. It should therefore be supported, more so as it has specific and sensitive problems to address.

Perhaps the most flabbergasting of the arguments against the proposed new Law School campuses is the one that pontificates that what the Law School needs is not new campuses but privatisation that would be subject to government regulation. In other words, they want the Nigerian Law School to be ceded to private individuals or organisations who will commercialise it. They have however not told us whether they want all the campuses handed over to a single investor, or to different ones, like the case of the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA). In any case, such a privatisation will come with the attendant capitalist ills like commercialisation, consumer exploitation, profit maximisation and unhealthy competition among the investors.

Whether anyone agrees or not, the Nigerian Law School is a unique citadel of learning and symbol of unity in Nigeria. So, Nigeria’s peculiarity has to be borne in mind; the fact that post-university vocational legal education is privatised in some country does not mean that it would necessarily be in the interest of Nigeria. How do we concede the Law School to one investor from a section or zone of the country without provoking grumbling and distrust from the others? If we decide to concede the different campuses in the different zones to investors from their zones, how would a concession of a tertiary educational institution like the Nigerian Law School based on zonal, ethnic or religious sentiments really promote learning and integration? Why should we fall into the temptation of creating unnecessary zonal or ethnic rivalry or competition in a country that seriously needs integration? We should simply let sleeping dogs lie. We should not destroy the decades-old unity that the Nigerian Law School symbolises and fosters in the country. We need to pay attention to this evergreen remarks of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, the then Chairman of the Body of Benchers and a former President of the Court of Appeal, at a call-to-the Bar ceremony at the Nigerian Law School as far back as 1996: “This institution [Nigerian Law School] … has not only served as a strong unifying centre for all would-be Nigerian lawyers, but have over the years maintained excellent standards and improved the quality of professional excellence. The Nigerian Law School is a pride to all of us, who like you had our first lesson on Nigerian laws in this alma mater. The Nigerian Law School is the number one School of Unity, of common brotherhood and understanding and nothing, therefore, should be done wittingly or unwittingly to destroy its corporate existence. It deserves to be encouraged by all of us.”

Moreover, privatising the Law School will destroy its international repute of being a foremost Law School in Africa, that has produced Queen’s Counsel (QC), a Gambian-born International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor and Nigerian lawyers who have been judges in different African countries. Today, the qualifying certificates issued by the Nigerian Law School is highly respected for the purpose of admission for master of laws and Ph D programmes at universities in foreign countries. If the Nigerian Law School is fragmented and shared among capitalists, we and our offspring may all have a price to pay for it.

We must also guard against privatising the Law School because that would destroy its ranking profile among Nigerian universities. Today, the Nigerian Law School has remained the most credible ‘ranking institution’ for Nigerian universities. Every year, many Nigerians, especially in the educational industry, look up to the performances of the products of the various Nigerian universities and overseas universities in the Nigerian Law School Bart Part II examinations. They diligently scroll to know which universities in Nigeria are at the top or at the bottom. The informal ranking by the Nigerian Law School has such categories as individual universities, public versus private universities and overseas universities. For all such reasons, God forbid that the Law School be privatised.

Privatising the Law School will surely solve the space problem that the Law School management has been battling with for years without being bold enough to tell the Nigerian public apparently for fear of embarrassment, but privatisation will kill the above-said national and international glories of the Law School. It is accordingly submitted that the Bill ought to be supported by all stakeholders, more so as it inculcates the historical realities of legal education in Nigeria, thereby complying with the historical school of jurisprudence.

In a nutshell, the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) (Amendment) Bill is commendable. Rather than seeking to frustrate the Bill, stakeholders should engage the National Assembly to cross the t’s and dot the i’s in it. For example, it is wrong to name yet another town from the South-South as a proposed campus when a new campus in the geo-political zone is already being constructed in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The naming of two towns as new campuses of the school in a single zone in a version of the Senate Bill is untenable and unwarranted. These are Port Harcourt, Rivers State, and yet Orogun, Delta State, in the same South-South and Kabba, Kogi State, and yet Jos, Plateau State, in the same North Central geo-political zone. The earlier announcement that the Bill aimed at creating just one new campus per zone is neat and cute. Anything more would really sound unserious and political.

The plight and interest of the teeming law graduates who have been suffering frustration yearly because they have no place in the Law School should be a collective concern of the stakeholders. They too are Nigerians whose destinies deserve to progress without any stagnation. We should not allow them to fall into the temptation of joining the youths who are today engrossed in such perilous maladies as cybercrimes, prostitution, kidnapping, militancy, banditry and terrorism. An idle hand is the Devil’s workshop.

I think the fastidious stakeholders will do well to grab the opportunity presented by the Bill so that we can, once and for all, solve the chronic problems of the Law School and of legal education that we have all been grappling with all these years. Let us partner with the National Assembly so that the Bill will not only create the new campuses, thereby eradicating the years-long problem of the backlog of law graduates seeking admission to the Law School, but also provide a space for the army of law graduates that will soon emerge from the colleges of law and faculties of law recently approved for the new private universities and public universities. It has to be noted that more and more private universities are ceaselessly seeking approval from both the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Council of Legal Education, more so as the college of law has now become a fascinating programme for these private universities for obvious reasons. The Senate Bill should be seen as “a divine help” for the many problems confronting the Law School and legal education in the country. The Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) Act (Amendment) Bill should be leveraged on by all stakeholders to address not just the creation of new campuses, but provisions for strict conditions for approval of new law faculties, synergy between the NUC and the Council of Legal Education for such approval, the propriety or otherwise of some private universities abridging the five-year university law programme into three years for VIPs under the excuse of “summer holiday lectures”, the propriety or otherwise of allowing only first degree holders to study law and the propriety or otherwise of making the Law School programme a two-year programme. There is the need to grab this golden opportunity presented by the Bill so address all such things. A stitch in time, they say, saves nine.

Another issue that the Bill should resolve is the propriety or otherwise of the Nigerian Law School not having an enabling Act. Do we not really need a Nigerian Law School (Establishment, Ratification and Administrative Procedure) Bill? It is embarrassing that all the public universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, colleges of nursing and midwifery, colleges of health technology and nearly all other tertiary educational institutions in Nigeria have enabling Acts or Laws drafted by lawyers before they were created but the very tertiary educational institution that produces those lawyers themselves have no enabling law! Somebody has jokingly remarked that this decades-old omission makes all Nigerian lawyers fake. It is time to correct the anomaly. You cannot build something on nothing. It is similarly submitted that there is the need for the Council of Legal Education to be distinct from the Nigerian Law School. The Law School should have its own Council. Is the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) also the same as the Council or Board of the University of Ibadan College of Medicine or that of the Ahamadu Bello University College of Medicine or that of the University of Nigeria College of Medicine? The Council of Legal Education should regulate legal education in the Law School and the universities, approve and accredit law programmes in all the universities in the country and set standards for the National Universities Commission and the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board on admission of law students into all the universities. The Council of the Law School should perform functions similar only to those performed by the councils of universities. This will dissuade the leadership of the Law School from extraneous activities like persistently going out for accreditation. It already has enough job to do in the many campuses of the Law School. Is the current situation wherein only one Dean of Law sits in the Council of Legal Education desirable? It is submitted that it is illogical that we have only one law lecturer in an assembly of 58 people deciding the fate of law students in the Giant of Africa! Less than 5% of insiders in their own internal affairs or matters that concern them more! Cannot we use the Bill to amend section 2 (1) (d) of the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) Act so that at least two law lecturers will henceforth represent each of the six geo-political zones? Cannot we leverage on it to have more insiders than outsiders?

In the light of the foregoing, the Senate Bill should stand, be made more robust and do more than establishing more campuses for the Law School; it should address many of the anomalies and predicaments that legal education has been facing in the country. This year makes the 60th anniversary of the Nigerian Law School; we need to take the bull by the horns by leveraging on the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc) (Amendment) Bill to reform it. In the light of the foregoing, it is submitted that the Honourable Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice ought to use his good office to persuade Nigerian President to sight the said Bill when it is passed by the House of Representatives.

Anthony S. Aladekomo, a law lecturer, sent this article via [email protected].