Court stops move by NOUN graduates to be admitted into law school

    A Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt Wednesday squashed a suit by law graduates of
the National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN, seeking to
be admitted into the Nigerian Law School, NLS.
     Some graduates of the Law Department of NOUN had on
the 12 May, 2015, instituted a legal action against the
Council of Legal Education, CLE, National University
Commission, NUC, Attorney General of the Federation, AGF,
and National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN, over their
refusal to allow them admission into the law school.
     The graduates in their suit wanted the court to compel the
relevant authorities to make provisions to include graduates
of the NOUN in the Nigerian Law School as benefiting by
law graduates from other institutions.
The legal counsel to the graduates, Prof Abiodun Amuda-
Kannika, SAN, had in court prayed the court to deliver
judgement in favour of his plaintiffs based on the relief sort
by the affected graduates.
    Meanwhile, counsel for CLE and the others, Mark Agwu,
told the court to strike out the matter, noting that part-time
and correspondent graduates are not qualified for
admission into the NLS.
      However, Justice Hilary Oshomah, in his judgement held:
“The power to admit students into law school is intrinsic
and since the first defendant (CLE) does not share its
power with any other person, that on issue of who to admit
students and criteria of admitting that student is a matter of
the domestic confines of council of Legal Education.”
Oshomah while explaining that academic matters should be
left in the hands of the academicians ruled: “This court
cannot decide to order University Commission or Council of
Legal Education to admit students from National Open
University of Nigeria into law school for reasons being that
they obtained their law degree by part-time or distance
education.”
“This is the decision of the Court, that the reliefs sort by the
plaintiff are totally misconceived, unmeriterous and not
granted. On this decision, this honourable court dismiss this
suit.”
    Meantime, counsel to the plaintiffs, Amuda-Kannika,
expressed hope that the judgement of the court would be
annulled on appeal, saying: “The decision has been given by
the court, we believe in God and I believe that
administratively it can be strengthened out. But it all
depends on my client they might have a second thought at
to the next line of action.
“We believe that we ought to have won, but haven lost, we
believe in God that their LLB certificate cannot just be LLB
alone, we will have BL at the end of the day because I
believe that the Attorney General still have power to
override the decision of the council of legal education
under Section 4 of the Council of Legal Education Act, to
allow the decision of the council to be set aside and allow
them to go to law school.”