The House of Representatives has waded into the prolonged dispute over the admission of National Open University of Nigeria law graduates into the Nigerian Law School, with more than 5,000 affected former students reportedly awaiting bar training.
The House Committee on Public Petitions has invited NOUN Vice-Chancellor, Uduma Uduma, and Nigerian Law School Director-General, Olugbemisola Odusote, to explain the circumstances surrounding the delay.
The invitation followed a petition by representatives of the affected graduates, who approached the lawmakers on July 21 over their inability to advance to professional legal training after completing their LLB degrees.
The petition, signed by Adeniyi Oladele, Paschal Egerue and Chibueze Obochi, said thousands of graduates had been left in limbo for years.
Neither the NOUN Vice-Chancellor nor the Law School DG attended the scheduled hearing. Both officials instead wrote to the committee, citing official engagements and requesting alternative dates.
NOUN Registrar, Oladipo Ajayi, said the Vice-Chancellor was outside the university on official duty. He also gave the lawmakers a timeline of the disagreement between the institution and the Council of Legal Education.
According to Ajayi, the controversy dates back to 2015, when the National Universities Commission conducted an accreditation exercise for NOUN’s LLB programme.
He said that while the university was awaiting the accreditation outcome, the Council of Legal Education announced that NOUN law graduates would not be admitted into the Law School.
NOUN subsequently stopped admitting fresh students into its LLB programme and held discussions with the CLE and other stakeholders in an effort to resolve the issue.
The university submitted 1,883 graduate names to the CLE in 2019 and later added 90 more. In 2020, the Body of Benchers approved a Special Remedial Programme for the graduates instead of the regular direct route into Bar Part II.
A further 2,226 graduates who completed their studies between 2019 and May 2022 were later presented for consideration. The CLE rejected the list, pointing to the 2015 suspension of admissions.
NOUN, however, argued that those students had been admitted before the suspension and only completed their programmes after the restriction took effect.
In a separate response, Odusote said she could not attend the hearing because of an official assignment and asked the committee to provide another date.
Meanwhile, Akin Rotimi, Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Publicity, said the National Assembly would seek to address the concerns raised by the graduates.
He said graduates who had completed their university education should not be subjected to indefinite uncertainty over their progression to professional legal training.
