March 13, 2009
We of the Legal Education Rights Agenda ,a platform of aggrieved Nigerian law students of the total decay within the Nigerian legal educational system once again cry out the systematic emasculation of would-be Nigerian lawyers through the present rabid privatisation and commercialisation of the Nigerian Law school with the present exorbitant fee regime in the institution .The outrage over the gross and widespread discomfort that Nigerian law students and graduates have been having facing based on the present fee regime has been on for a while with the Council making bold attempts at suppressing these agitations .
Legal Education Rights Agenda view the arguments posed by the Council of Legal Education ever since the agitations over this injustice started that it could not sustain the education of any student in the institution at any lesser cost or even at a higher cost as a direct indictment on the rudderless present regime that puts the budgetary allocation to the entire expansive education at a meagre 7.2 percent .The Council has been maintaining that the high-rate fee regime placed on the entrants into the institution is the only means by which it could sustain the qualitative standard within the institution yet the accommodation ,welfare and learning conditions in the campuses of the Nigerian Law School are grossly inept and inadequate. Where then do the funds go to?
We of the Legal Education Rights Agenda call for probe into the affairs of the Council and the Law school campuses in particular over this apparent fraud going on within the institution must be investigated and brought into public scrutiny .We claim that over 600 million naira has been garnered by the institution so far and NOTHING to show for it.
As we have rightly claimed ,the Nigerian Council of Legal Education have been suppressing any inquisition or outrage over this fraud by perpetrating by attacking such platforms as the National Association of Nigerian Law Graduates ,which was a coalition of aggrieved law graduates as at 2007 when the Council made a one –hundred percent increase of the fees from the former pathetic #150,000 to the present calcifying #220,000.We have it on record that the arrowheads of that brave endeavour were threatened with being barred from being called to the Bar and this threat was waived after the Council was able to gag these heroes.
LERA wants to make it clear that suppression of this is kind would never stifle the outcry over the agony it has been putting homes ,parents ,students ,graduates ,workers and the entire Nigerian people into through this exploitation. LERA acknowledges that the apathy and silence on the part of majority of law students to organise ,mobilise and push off this rotten wall.
LERA also recognise that the Council is out rightly acting out the scripts of the crassly-opportunistic ruling class in their full bid to take legal education from the reach of the poor and inadvertently draw away legal services away from the Nigerian masses. And it is glaringly clear that it would take only Jupiter for any lawyer that is trained at the exorbitant price of almost a million to offer pro bono legal services for the poor.
For a nation that is grossly in need of a strong civil society that will take the establishment to task ,the Council is not only emasculating the agitators and social critics that make law tick but also abort the acess to justice by the poor.
For us in LERA,we recognise the root of the present crises within the Nigerian legal education is a direct fall-out of the underfunding of the Nigerian educational system by the successive neo-liberal regimes which have put the education sector in rot. We therefore reject the meagre 7.2 percent signed in the 2009 budget by the present rudderless Yar’adua regime and call for increase up to 26% as recommended by UNESCO.
We equally demand the immediate reversal of the commercialisation of the Nigerian law school in particular and privatisation of legal education in universities across the nation. We equally call that the resources of the Nigerian Law School be put into solving the myriad of problems confronted by students of the institution ranging from poor welfare to learning conditions.
We ultimately call for the justiciability of the Chapter Two of the 1999 constitution which will enable stakeholders of the Nigerian educational system to adequately demand for their rights .In this measure, we in LERA believe that we will be able to put our dear nation on the path of unlimited greatness.
Alexander S.
Legal Education Rights Agenda
Legal Education Rights Agenda view the arguments posed by the Council of Legal Education ever since the agitations over this injustice started that it could not sustain the education of any student in the institution at any lesser cost or even at a higher cost as a direct indictment on the rudderless present regime that puts the budgetary allocation to the entire expansive education at a meagre 7.2 percent .The Council has been maintaining that the high-rate fee regime placed on the entrants into the institution is the only means by which it could sustain the qualitative standard within the institution yet the accommodation ,welfare and learning conditions in the campuses of the Nigerian Law School are grossly inept and inadequate. Where then do the funds go to?
We of the Legal Education Rights Agenda call for probe into the affairs of the Council and the Law school campuses in particular over this apparent fraud going on within the institution must be investigated and brought into public scrutiny .We claim that over 600 million naira has been garnered by the institution so far and NOTHING to show for it.
As we have rightly claimed ,the Nigerian Council of Legal Education have been suppressing any inquisition or outrage over this fraud by perpetrating by attacking such platforms as the National Association of Nigerian Law Graduates ,which was a coalition of aggrieved law graduates as at 2007 when the Council made a one –hundred percent increase of the fees from the former pathetic #150,000 to the present calcifying #220,000.We have it on record that the arrowheads of that brave endeavour were threatened with being barred from being called to the Bar and this threat was waived after the Council was able to gag these heroes.
LERA wants to make it clear that suppression of this is kind would never stifle the outcry over the agony it has been putting homes ,parents ,students ,graduates ,workers and the entire Nigerian people into through this exploitation. LERA acknowledges that the apathy and silence on the part of majority of law students to organise ,mobilise and push off this rotten wall.
LERA also recognise that the Council is out rightly acting out the scripts of the crassly-opportunistic ruling class in their full bid to take legal education from the reach of the poor and inadvertently draw away legal services away from the Nigerian masses. And it is glaringly clear that it would take only Jupiter for any lawyer that is trained at the exorbitant price of almost a million to offer pro bono legal services for the poor.
For a nation that is grossly in need of a strong civil society that will take the establishment to task ,the Council is not only emasculating the agitators and social critics that make law tick but also abort the acess to justice by the poor.
For us in LERA,we recognise the root of the present crises within the Nigerian legal education is a direct fall-out of the underfunding of the Nigerian educational system by the successive neo-liberal regimes which have put the education sector in rot. We therefore reject the meagre 7.2 percent signed in the 2009 budget by the present rudderless Yar’adua regime and call for increase up to 26% as recommended by UNESCO.
We equally demand the immediate reversal of the commercialisation of the Nigerian law school in particular and privatisation of legal education in universities across the nation. We equally call that the resources of the Nigerian Law School be put into solving the myriad of problems confronted by students of the institution ranging from poor welfare to learning conditions.
We ultimately call for the justiciability of the Chapter Two of the 1999 constitution which will enable stakeholders of the Nigerian educational system to adequately demand for their rights .In this measure, we in LERA believe that we will be able to put our dear nation on the path of unlimited greatness.
Alexander S.
Legal Education Rights Agenda
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