Okocha
A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association and Chairman of the Council of Legal Education, Onueze Okocha, in this interview with CHUKWUDI AKASIKE, speaks on sundry national issues, including the falling quality of law graduates
THERE has been a controversy over the defection of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, from the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress. Do you think this controversy is necessary?
We have to be honest; it was a controversial decision that the Speaker took. I have to say that Aminu Tambuwal is my friend and professional colleague. I remember vividly when I contested to be the President of the Nigerian Bar Association in 1998, Tambuwal was the secretary or assistant secretary of the Sokoto branch of the NBA. He was elected into the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. It cannot be denied that his position has become controversial, having been elected on the platform of the PDP as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
How will you react to the calls for his resignation?
It is before the Federal High Court in Abuja and I prefer not to make any comment.
A senator in the National Assembly is said to be taking more than N20m as monthly pay, even when the national minimum wage is N18,000. What is your view on this?
I hope it is not true because we know that salaries and wages are fixed by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission. Repeatedly, we in the civil societies, including my professional body– the Nigerian Bar Association, have been at odds with our elected representatives in the various legislatures, including the National Assembly. I think that some factual information is still necessary to determine what exactly the senators and the members of the House of Representatives earn. Now, the salaries are one thing as they tell us, but then there are allowances and other perquisites of office, which nobody is ever able to determine what those amount to. I think it is imperative that members of the National Assembly come clean and tell us exactly what they earn as salaries and receive as allowances. It would be sad if, as alleged, they earn in the neighbourhood of N20m per month. That amounts to nearly N240m per year. It is even higher than the President’s salary and it is unheard of. If that is true, it must be condemned in no uncertain terms. But as I said, nobody knows the real facts and figures and we call for all concerned to be honest and truthful about the matter.
There has been a drop in the quality of lawyers being churned out by the country’s Law School. How can the situation be rescued?
As you may know, I am also the Chairman of the Council of Legal Education. That is the council that runs the Nigerian Law School’s six campuses across Nigeria. It was a most unfortunate development the way the last Bar final exams turned out. Nearly 33 per cent of the students who sat for the Bar finals failed and only about 51 per cent passed. Even though the press and some fifth columnists had alleged that over 50 per cent of the students failed, it is not true. Thirty-one or 32 per cent failed. But even at that, it was not a happy development. We have looked at it and you know that the Council of Legal Education has a Board of Studies that looks through the exam results and then approves them before they bring it up to the council. When we saw it, there was nothing we could do. The students who failed performed poorly and when we inquired into the matter, we discovered that some of the students were not taking their studies seriously. Some of them were using their iPhones, iPads, BlackBerry phones and other mobile gadgets to communicate with their friends on social networking sites while classes and tutorials were going on. Therefore, we thought we needed to send the signal to the students; they must rise up and take their studies seriously.
You also made a comment about standards falling in the legal profession.
That is the unfortunate truth. As you have just heard, students would not take their studies seriously. We tried to analyse the situation and we found out that the problem had its origin in less intelligent students entering universities. Our educational system in Nigeria is not what it used to be. Students with poor Ordinary Level certificates are entering universities. Some of them have C6 in English and can’t speak passable English. You don’t teach English in the university; you don’t teach English in the Law school. English is the basic tool for a lawyer.
We have to take a critical look at education at all levels. We must ensure that those that should enter the universities are those who have proper secondary school education. That is the reason why there is a drop in the standard of legal education. But the Council of Legal Education is taking some steps; we have set up a committee to liaise with the National Universities Commission to redesign the curriculum for legal education in Nigeria. We are now imposing strict measures on the universities that have faculties of law. And even those who are not measuring up, we are withdrawing their accreditation to run faculties of law. This is already in place and I believe that in no distant future, we will soon begin to see the result and we believe that properly trained lawyers will be released from the Nigerian Law School to be called to the bar in Nigeria.
-punch
June 09, 2012, 06:10:49 PM