NIGERIA LAW SCHOOL LOSING ITS STANDARDS

Mr. Olanrewaju Onadeko, the Director General of the Nigerian Law School, has lamented the continuous fall in the standard of the Nigerian legal education system, regretting that this problems are  increasing each day, especially because of the growing number of students.

He expressed this in his home-coming address to Nigerian Law School, class of 1975 members, who held their 40th reunion dinner on November 28 in Lagos campus of the institution. He described the 1975 set as a class of achievers.

The DG said,the current Nigerian Law School students, unlike the old breeds have abandoned the habit of reading or buying textbooks and instead depend heavily on Internet materials.

Onadeko refuted the claim that the school is making it difficult for students to qualify as legal practitioners, and also frowned on parents' attitudes by expecting the School to bring its standard down to their children level instead of encouraging the students to step up.

He said, “Students of today have more access to knowledge than in your own time. Nowadays, whatever new law or progress of jurisprudence anywhere in the world can be accessed at the touch of a button and the consequence of this, we have realized, is that our students are not reading as much as you did because they tend to read only those things that they consider relevant to what they want to do. So, some superficiality goes on now and that is quite worrisome.”

He also assigned blame to the private universities who contribute to the production of half-baked students due to the criteria used in admitting and their "policy of ensuring that all those who come in graduate" which he said is very disturbing as this is not so in both "the state and federal universities."

The D.G said, “Last year, a particular university in Benin Republic sent to us 150 graduates. That is the quota given to the Lagos State University, that is the quota of the University of Ilorin, that is the quota of University of Ibadan and this is a university located outside… And in truth these are students who could not get admission into Nigeria universities, but they lower the standard and graduate students in fewer years than we would have done in Nigeria.”

Despite all the challenges, the D.G said he was sure that there is hope and a bright future for the legal education system in the country.

Present at the reunion dinner were a former Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Ayotunde Phillips (retd.), a former Chief Judge of Ogun State, Justice Charles Jacobs; Justice Lateefa Okunnu of the Lagos State High Court and others.