23112022

22— Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2022
Abuja central law school for Nigeria - archaic (4)
THE WAY FORWARD: IN the past
few weeks, I have surveyed the
process of bar licensing in frontline
common law jurisdictions in England,
Canada, the United States, Australia,
India, and Kenya. It is clear from this
survey that Legal Education has
moved beyond the obsolete system of
having a centralised Law School.
Because society does not remain
static, the process of legal education
in Nigeria cannot remain static and
must evolve in accordance with
international best practices and
contemporary realities.
Today, the legal education system in
Nigeria faces existential challenges
that cannot be addressed simply by
opening many branch campuses of the
Nigerian Law School.
To address the current challenges
that impact the quality and relevance
of legal education in Nigeria, our bar
licensing process will need to be
wholly reformed to provide new
entrants into the profession with the
world-class practical skills and
technological competencies required to
take on the challenges of the 21st
century and beyond.
A survey of the bar licensing process
in frontier common law jurisdictions
such as England, Canada, the United
States, Australia, India, and Kenya
clearly shows that legal education has
progressed beyond the outdated
system of having a central law school
t h a t
administers
vocational
b a r
training
programmes
in large
auditoriums
at its
branch
campuses.
Other
common
l a w
countries
have seen
The Council of
Legal Education
in Nigeria
should play the
role of a
regulator that
sets the standard
for the provision
of legal
education in
Nigeria
the value in opening the bar training
process to accredited private service
providers with the required facilities,
ICT infrastructure, and resources to
conduct personalized and practiceoriented
training that enable learners
to absorb practical legal skills in a selfpaced
manner.
As efforts continue to update and
reform the Legal Education
(Consolidation Etc) Act, what is
required is that like the Bar Standards
Board, BSB, in England, the Council
of Legal Education in Nigeria should
play the role of a regulator that sets
the standard for the provision of legal
education in Nigeria.
In addition to its current role in
accrediting and supervising
universities and law faculties that
provide LL.B. education, the Council
of Legal Education should also have
the authority to licence and accredit
private service providers to provide
vocational training for bar aspirants
beyond the exclusive preserve of the
Nigerian Law School. Such service
providers, especially universities
which have reputable Law Colleges
and advanced ICT infrastructure,
should be licensed to train law
graduates for 12 months, after which
they will take a Joint Bar Examination
moderated by the Council.
In addition to accrediting the service
providers and administering the Joint
Bar Examination, the Council of Legal
Education will set the criteria for the
curricula and mode of instruction for
the bar course; set standards for the
infusion of practice-oriented courses
and examinations by service providers;
and the continuous monitoring
evaluation and renewal of licenses of
the service providers.
With this proposed arrangement, law
graduates from Nigerian universities
will be able to select reputable
colleges or faculties of law of their
choice with up-to-date facilities and
faculty members of international repute
for their post-LL.B. bar training course,
and then write their call to bar
examinations without having to be
residential students in any law school
as is currently the case.
Paucity of
funding
This way, the problems of paucity of
funding, poor facilities, and
inadequate accommodation space
would have been solved. It is common
knowledge today that there is not a
single one of the existing campuses of
the Nigerian Law School that has the
modern equipment, libraries, internet
facilities, E-libraries, and modern ICT
infrastructure needed to deliver
practical and experiential vocational
training for all Nigerian law graduates
every year.
This situation has resulted in some
law graduates having to wait for years
to be admitted to the Nigerian Law
School, and even when admitted, the
inadequate infrastructure and facilities
at the campuses reduce the
opportunities for practice-oriented skill
acquisition.
It, therefore, makes absolutely no
sense, to create more mushroom
campuses, not least for political
expediency.
The training of lawyers in Nigeria
needs to be immediately decentralized
in line with international best
practices. Universities and institutions
with world-class faculty, training
facilities and ICT infrastructure should
be licensed to provide the hands-on
opportunities for practice-oriented
skills' acquisition.
Furthermore, joint bar examinations
can then be conducted in line with the
current testing arrangements for
JAMB, WAEC, NECO, ICAN and CIB
examinations.
By so doing, the perennial
challenges of inadequate quality of
legal education and infrastructure, and
lack of relevant skills training to meet
with the ever-changing demands of the
modern world, will be comprehensively
dismantled in a holistic manner
through competitive legal training that
benefits from private sector innovation
and efficient service delivery.
*Please send your comments and suggestions
to my email: president@abuad.edu.ng.
Its good governance, stupid
By MOHAMMED HARUNA
SECTION 22 of the Constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999,
imposes an obligation on the media to hold
government accountable to Nigerians. “The
press, radio, television and other agencies of
the mass media,” the section says, “shall at all
times be free to uphold the fundamental
objectives contained in this chapter and uphold
the responsibility and accountability of the
Government to the people.” The chapter in
reference is Chapter II and it is titled
“Fundamental Objectives and Directive
Principles of State Policy”. It is in twelve
sections, beginning with Section 13 of the
Constitution and ending in Section 24.
The chapter says the country shall be a state
based on the principle of democracy and social
justice. It lists a number of fundamental
objectives for the state, including political,
economic, social, educational, environmental,
cultural and foreign objectives.It also says the
nation’s ethics shall be “discipline, integrity,
dignity of labour, social justice, religious
tolerance, self-reliance and patriotism. Last,
but not the least, it imposes a number of duties
on the country’s citizens, including abiding by
the provisions of its constitution, respecting
the dignity, rights and legitimate interests of
others and declaring income honestly to
appropriate and lawful agencies and paying
tax promptly.
My initial thought on reading my topic was
that I should talk about why and how the media
should hold the politician accountable to the
public. However, on second thoughts it
occurred to me that this responsibility should
go beyond the media alone as enunciated in
the constitution. Instead, it should be
everybody’s concern. Even then, the media as
the Fourth Estate of the Realm, must lead the
way, if only becausetogether as print, radio,
television and the internet it is the main source
of news and information in society.
While it is important that the media and the
rest of society hold politicians accountable to
the rest of society, politicians are not the only
ones that should be held accountable to society.
Beyond politicians, every group in society
should be held accountable to its society. After
all it is not politicians alone who are saddled
with the responsibility for making decisions
on behalf of society. Big business, big labour,
big pharma, and, of course, big media, etc., all
of them make decisions that affect people.
Therefore, we must go beyond the
constitutional enunciations for the media to
hold Government accountable to the public
and hold every institution whose decisions and
actions have impact on people and society to
account for their decisions and actions.
As the leader in holding, not just politicians,
but all other groups, accountable to the people,
the media must be guided by knowledge, ethics
(integrity, courage, professionalism,
impartiality, etc.) and civility in language, if
only because intemperate language, generally
speaking, but name calling and stereotyping,
m o r e
specifically,
tends to
alienate
rather than
engage. The
first step the
media must
take in
holding
politicians
accountable
MOHAMMED HARUNA to the public
is to be knowledgeable about politics and, of
course, everything else it reports. This should
start with being knowledgeable about the rules
that guide our politics.
The most important of these rules is the
country’s constitution, especially since the
constitution says the only legitimate form of
government is the elected one. The second is
our new Electoral Act 2022. The third is the
Independent National Electoral Commission’s
(INEC’s) Election Regulations and Guidelines,
2022. There are, of course, many other
documents, including Manuals for Election
Officials, political party Constitutions, Case
laws, etc. but thesethree constitute the most
important elements of the country’s Electoral
Legal Framework. Our constitution suffers
from a poor image, but in spite of its flaws
(something no constitution in the world is free
from) the image, including the fact that, with
over 75,000 words, it is rather too longish (by
comparison, the United States is no more than
8,000, including all its 27 amendments) is not
altogether deserved. This poor image is based
on the claim that it was written by the military
and, because of that, it is only federal in name
but unitary in reality. Both claims are false.
The military has never written any of our
constitutions, certainly neither the current 1999
Constitution nor that of 1979, which the former
is essentially a clone of. Both were written by
civilians, mostly elected, with a few nominated.
The drafts of both were subjected to public
hearings in all the nooks and corners of this
country before they were promulgated into law.
Yes, the military held a veto over both but in
promulgating each into the country’s supreme
law, they hardly changed their substance.
As for the claim that the constitution is
unitary in fact, if not in theory, nothing could
be further from the truth. This claim has led to
the popular fallacy that what Nigeria needs is
“true federalism.” A federation is simply a
system of government in which a written
constitution distributes power and
responsibility between a national government
and a number of state or regional governments.
However, no two federations distribute power
and responsibility the same way because the
historical context of each country is different
and, therefore, the distribution that is
appropriate for one country may not be
appropriate for another. Only three days ago,
i.e.,on November 15, a national daily,
published an editorial titled “Restructuring
should dominate 2023 campaigns” in which
it referred to the country’s government as
“unitary federalism”. It then went on to blame
every ill that has afflicted Nigeria on our
constitution. Consequently, it said, “The calls
that true federalism be the main agenda (of
The military has
never written any of
our constitutions,
certainly neither the
current 1999
Constitution nor that
of 1979, which the
former is essentially
a clone of
the 2023
General
Election)
should,
therefore, be
heeded.”
T h e
newspaper
highlighted
three areas,
namely,
minerals,
police and
prison, in which it claims the Federal Government
dominance of legislation, and with it, the
distribution of revenue, has spelt doom and
insecurity for the country. There may be some truth
to this claim but without debating its merit I think
it ignores the historical context of the country’s
current power sharing formula. Even more
importantly, it completely ignores the fact that
good governance has little, or even nothing, to
do with the quantum of revenue available to a
government. Indeed, if anything, it can be argued,
from Nigeria’s historical experience, that the more
money people have, the less frugal and more
reckless they tend to be.
As I argued more than ten years ago in one
of my columns (October 2, 2012) all the quarrel
with our constitution is essentially a classic
case of a bad workman quarrelling with his
tool. Of course, our constitution is not perfect.
None is. But in spite of its imperfections, if we
had kept faith with it, Nigeria would have been
in a much better shape than its current sorry
state, given the vast oil and other revenues it
has had since former Military Head of State,
General Yakubu Gowon, famously, (some
would say infamously), declared that money
was no object for the country but how to spend
it. As a manmade instrument, all constitutions
can always be improved upon. However, only
a bad workman, which your typical Nigerian
politician is, will contemplate changing his
country’s constitution the eight or so times we
have since our Independence in 1960. Compare
this to the Americans who have not changed
their Constitution since 1787 when they first
wrote it and since 1789 when it started
functioning. Instead, they have amended it only
27 times or so since then.
Continues online:www.vanguardngr.com
•Being a paper at the Media Roundtable on
“The Accountability Imperative: Why and
How to Hold the Politicians’ Feet to Fire”
organized by FrontFoot Media Initiative,
Lagos, at Bon Hotel, Ikeja