Proceeding to various Nigerian Law School campuses immediately after five years of their undergraduate programme in the University of Ibadan has always been the dream of many of the 2018/2019 Faculty of Law graduates. Even though past records show that this has not always been the case for previous graduates of the faculty who, more often than not, have to wait for as long as eight to ten months before commencing their law school registration— the 2018/2019 set still kept this hope alive. It therefore came as a fulfilment of dream when in October 2019, the Faculty Management announced plans for an accelerated calendar in order to meet up with the Law School resumption by January 2020.
In a bid to achieve this, their resumption came two weeks before the general resumption, lectures were taken in torrents and examinations were written amidst the ecstasy of the yuletide festivity, putting a cap to their undergraduate days in the first week of January, 2020. With this, expectations of resuming at the Nigerian Law School went high, even though the information on the exact resumption date, approval of law school candidates and posting to various campuses remained scarce till mid February.
However, when by mid February the list of graduates proceeding to law school was released, it was discovered that more than fifty candidates would not be proceeding with their equals to the Law school due to factors totally unconnected with any fault from their end.
Speaking with a student who was affected, he lamented at the recent development thus
I won’t be going to Law School because, apparently my surname didn’t favour my selection, not because I didn’t pass all my courses or because I can’t afford the fees, but because I had the unusual luck of having a surname that doesn’t start with any of the first fourteen letters of the alphabet. Allegedly, the Faculty had a backlog of names from previous set and sent those names to Law school before sending ours. When they sent our names, Law school merely added the names in alphabetical order to the list of the names they had on ground before. And since UI only has a quota of about 150, the rest of us were cut out to wait till next year.”
Reaching out to students whose names were found on the list, it was discovered that despite having the assurance of proceeding to Law School this year, none of them is yet to know the specific campuses they were being posted to.
Speaking on this delay, a member of the set (name withheld) stated:
This delay is not helping us at all. We don’t even know what is going on, we don’t know who to hold accountable for the delay. Our colleagues in other schools have resumed and started work, and we are here just wasting away the time. Sincerely, this is not the way to lay a good foundation for a great performance at the Law school.
Another student whose name was on the list, but has not known what campus to go or when to resume spoke to our correspondence:
The whole process was gotten wrong from the start. We were just rushed to finish everything; our projects, our examinations and so on, but here we are more than a month after we officially graduated, there’s no prospect of resuming anytime, and to even think that some people would not be proceeding to law school because of something as minute as the first letter of their surname makes everything sickening.
From his end, the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor Adeniyi Olatunbosun, speaking on the development with our correspondent stated that the faculty has done all it could and that it can only expect an increase in the current quota to make room for more students:
“We have done our part for them. The issue of admission at the law school is at the discretion of law school so we are not the one. If there are issues, at the end of the day, we would get over it. The Law School would come back and also increase our quota so we are deemed to have more than what they are giving us for now.”
Explaining further, he drew the students’ attention to the fact that not only the University of Ibadan is being affected by this. He stated:
“Most other universities have always been encountering that. For this present situation, the same thing applies to Ife, the same thing applies to University of Lagos, University of Benin, University of Ilorin, so it is not only University of Ibadan.”
On whether the recent development would have any effect on subsequent set of graduates, the Dean reiterated that there would be no negative effect of any sort. He however stated, when asked if there would also be an accelerated calendar for the students resuming for their final year, that for the time being, there would be no acceleration for any set.
“Which accelerated calendar when normalcy has not returned to the University System? Lecturers are human being, they cannot be working under hardship and under agony for the purpose of meeting anything. The faculty will run normal calendar and then we would see what would happen. There is no accelerated calendar for any set.” As at the time of this report, more than eighty students who were lucky to make it to the list of students going to Law School are yet to know which specific campuses they are being posted for the completion of their legal education, notwithstanding the fact that the Nigerian Law School has been three weeks gone into full fledged lectures.
