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From Godwin Tsa Abuja
Lack of adequate facilities and accumulated percentage of failures over the years are responsible for backlog of admission of qualified candidates into the Nigerian Law School (NLS).
Pursuant to the Legal Education Act of 2004, the Council of Legal Education (CLE) is saddled with the responsibility of administering vocational training, which qualifies law graduates to be licensed legal practitioners in Nigeria through the NLS.
Specifically, the NLS offers practical training to aspiring legal practitioners in Nigeria and issues professional qualifying certifications to candidates who pass the Bar exams.
However, every year, thousands of qualified law graduates from the accredited universities are unable to secure admission into the law school due to inadequacy of facilities at the campuses to accommodate them, creating a situation of backlog of admission of qualified candidates.
More so, the persistent ASUU strikes over the past few years and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic, equally disrupted the smooth operation of the school system for nearly nine months.
Consequently, there has been a backlog of students, particularly from public universities, who could not proceed immediately after graduation due to failure to meet the Nigerian Law School academic calendar.
Some universities have one or two student backlogs that could not proceed to law school for the compulsory Bar Part 2 training to qualify as full-fledged lawyers.
Over the years, there have been appeals from various quarters, urging the law school to introduce mid-semester admissions or increase the intake quota of students from public universities.
After careful consideration by the legal education council regarding the grievances from the universities unable to align with the law school’s academic calendar, resulting in a backlog of students, the CLE is prepared to implement mid-semester admissions.
However, this session is not open to universities that have exceeded their approved admission quotas. The application process for the mid-semester admission commenced on March 18, 2024.
The facilities of the NLS cannot accommodate all graduates of the faculties or colleges of law in the country. In fact, Daily Sun investigation revealed that from 2017, if not earlier, the NLS had consistently been unable to accommodate all law graduates from the accredited universities across the nation.
There are seven campuses of the NLS. However, the Senate has approved the establishment of seven additional campuses in Abuja, Lagos, Enugu, Yenagoa, Yola, Port Harcourt and Kano campuses to bring the number to 14.
The rest are the Nigerian Law School, Jos Campus, Plateau State; the Nigerian Law School Kabba Campus, Kogi State; the Nigerian Law School, Yola Campus, Adamawa State and the Nigerian Law School, Maiduguri Campus, Borno State.
The Senate rightly observed that, in addition to the number of law graduates far exceeding the infrastructural capacity of the campuses of the Nigerian Law School, the law school has a 30 percent failure rate yearly.
However, the intake capacities of these campuses is less than 10,000 students, well below the total number of law graduates from the accredited universities.
As at 2023, just 77 universities had been accredited by the CLE to give degrees in Law and to send their law graduates to the Nigerian Law School for vocational training. These comprises 16 federal universities, 24 state universities and 37 private universities. The combined quota of all 77 universities is 7,555.
In 2024, the CLE further approved the accreditation of five universities to give degrees in Law and to send their law graduates to the Nigerian Law School for vocational training. These are Adamawa State University; Mewar International University; Federal University Warri; Taraba State University, and the Nigerian Police Academy, Kano State.
The CLE gave accreditation for 50 students each to these universities.
This adds 250 candidates to the number of students that can be admitted to the Nigerian Law School for vocational training, bringing the total number of students that are eligible for admission into the Nigerian Law School to 7,805 graduates of law per year.
The sad reality, therefore, is that every year, 1,305 candidates from duly accredited universities are unable to get into the law school because of the limited facilities of the Nigerian Law School campuses to accommodate them.
The implication of this is that about 1,950 aspirants to the bar fail each year and have to repeat the law school another year. However, this is without the guarantee that they will pass at the second attempt.
This percentage of failure has accumulated over several years. Hence, more graduates of law will have to wait between two years to four years for admission into the Nigerian Law School due to lack of vacancy to admit them into the few campuses available.
This also means that the NLS will only be able to take in about 4,550 entrants each year and with a possibility that the figure may vary depending on the level of repeat-failure in that year.
