In spite of the perceived decrease in the quality of legal education, Nigeria’s Premier University, the University of Ibadan, has continued to excel both in the Law Degree programme and at the Nigerian Law School with majority of its first class graduates also going on to attain the same grade at the Nigerian Law School. Jude Igbanoi and Yinka Olatunbosun went to the Law Faculty of the university last Tuesday to find out from the Dean, Professor Oluyemisi Bamgbose what methods the faculty applies to groom such outstanding law gradates, including one who clinched eight of a total of ten prizes at the Nigerian Law School recently…
Students of the Law Faculty of the University of Ibadan of which you have been Dean for almost five years have continued to excel, both in the LL.B programme and at the Nigerian Law School. Recently, two of your students gained a First Class in your faculty and repeated the same feat at the Law School. With recent complaints about the drop in standard of legal education, what is UI Law Faculty doing differently that you are able to produce such outstanding students?
It has really been the grace of God. In addition, I must commend the academic staff. The diligence is there. You go to some universities and the lecturers are not on seat.
Go round our faculty now and you will see our academic staff, either in the library or in their offices. When you have lecturers in a law faculty who cannot do diligent research, how can they go and teach students? We must therefore commend our members of staff for being on ground and for being dedicated.
Secondly, the method of teaching in the University of Ibadan Law Faculty is exceptional. In fact we have adopted what is called Clinical Legal Education mode of teaching. It is different from the conventional way of teaching law. The traditional way of teaching is where the lecturer goes to class, dictates notes and a student who may not come to class would know where you are going to dictate from. Such students would not come to class because they know they can always collect notes from their fellow student which they can copy. They also know that lecturers take textbooks to class and simply read from those books. So, the students can predict what the lecturer is going to say next.
That is not our position in the University of Ibadan Law Faculty. We use the clinical legal education method of teaching. The method is student centered and not lecturer centered. The method encourages the use of drama, talk shows and other modern methods of teaching the students.
The students come to class and know that it is not Professor Bamgbose’s class, but their own class. Once you miss the class, you have missed it. It is not something somebody can tell you what happened. For instance, somebody cannot describe a drama; no one can really explain to you what happened. The students go to the library, go on the internet and get all resources available to them. It is no longer the lecturer getting the resources and pumping it into the heads of the students. It’s the students who go and do the research and come and present it in class.
You’ll agree with me that since you watched The Sound of Music, you’ll forever remember the movie and I know that you watched it as a child; but tell me what your lecturer told you on the 24th day of May some years ago. I am sure you would not easily remember! So, now when the students come to class, they are the ones that talk and express themselves. It’s only when they make mistakes in some areas that the lecturer will now fill in the gaps.
Everything in this faculty is so real. One day some our students were acting out a crime scene and my son who is now a lawyer was in the cast. I gave them a case about a riot scene. It was a real life incident that happened in Oshogbo and I asked them to use it to explain a visit to the locus incuo. It was a riot scene in which so many of the rioters were arrested and taken to court.
The students were acting out that scene and it was so real and incidentally, my son was the one acting the part, leading the rioters. The student that acted the policeman was dressed in real police uniform. When he was arresting my son in the play, it was so real that as he was dragging and struggling with my son, one of the staff who was passing nearby saw it and was like ‘No! That is the Dean’s son! Please, someone call the Dean!’ The students were trying trying to shake the staff away, saying, ‘Don’t spoil our drama, don’t spoil our drama!’
I eventually came out and asked what was happening and saw it all and laughed. Now, tell me, if you ever ask such students to explain what is locus incuo, will they ever forget?
So, this is the method that is now used in the Law School and when our students get to the Law School, it’s no longer strange to them. A student once told her father ‘I don’t understand what they are teaching in law school, they don’t give us notes.’ I had to explain to the father that it is the new method of teaching in the Law School. Lecturers no longer dictate notes.
This explains why if any our students have a first class here, that student will surely have a first class in law school. Incidentally, at the last call to Bar, out of the 10 prizes in Law School one of our students, Damilola Odesola, got eight of the awards. She had a first class from here and she also had a first class at the Law School. This is what makes UI very unique.
Thirdly, I must mention the administration of the University of Ibadan. The administration has been very supportive. Law is their baby. The university administration has supported the faculty and its clinical legal education programme so well. In fact, we have a Women’s Law Clinic in which our students participate.
There is the Association of Law Teachers and they have their yearly conferences. Have you made any efforts to share this idea of clinical legal education with them, so that other law faculties can benefit from the method?
Yes. The Law School has advocated this. Incidentally we have an association called Network of University Legal Aid Institutions, NULAI, that advocates for this clinical legal education. The law school is championing this cause. But you know there are some institutions that can never change. For them, it’s like ‘the old time religion!’ Most of the older generation law faculties have this attitude of ‘as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be!’ Some of these institutions are just not prepared to buy into it!
But I believe that as they see our success story and see what is going on, they might change. At the Law Teachers Association meeting in Kogi State, not long ago, one of the papers presented was on the success story of the University of Ibadan Clinical Legal Education. So, they are aware and I am sure they would eventually change.
What about the character of your students? Because at the Law School and before you are called to the Bar, they require that you must be found worthy in learning and character. How do you prepare your students in terms of their character, outside of their academic training?
I really must commend the law students of the University of Ibadan. We have a very good Law Students Society. The society has rules and regulations and when any student breaches any of these rules, there are sanctions. The Law Students Society has a ‘Judiciary’ and they have a very firm ‘Chief Judge.’
What we do at the faculty level, we ensure that students obey all the rules. You must dress properly in the mandatory black and white. The comportment must be there. You cannot find any of our students speaking vernacular, it is not allowed!
An accreditation team came here recently and they were going around. They went into a lecture hall and they immediately asked, ‘Are you sure a lecture held here?’ and they asked, ‘Why is the lecture hall so clean? No piece of paper on the floor, no sachet on the floor?’ I said, ‘Why should there be pieces of paper on the floor?’
Incidentally, do you know our law students don’t take sachet water? They drink water from the bottle. That is why they call them the ‘Penguins of UI.’ You know penguins are very elegant and stylish. I invite you to go round the faculty. This is how the faculty looks every time. You cannot see pieces of paper on the ground anywhere.
So, the Law Students’ Society has strict rules and the faculty has a disciplinary committee as a check. For instance, for the final year students, the Dean will have to sign their Law School forms. There is a section in the forms that asks whether the student if fit and proper and we will never tell a lie!
We cannot say you are fit and proper if we cannot vouch for you. If you have ever faced any disciplinary committee of the university, all that will be reflected there.
Our students are given a sensitisation programme at the beginning of every session. They are told about the importance of the legal profession and what flouting the rules in the faculty would do to them.
For instance, our female students are not allowed to go for any fashion parade. They must not take part in any beauty pageant. They must comport themselves all the time. Any law student who takes part in such is out.
It is a fact that law graduates do not have a choice as to where they are posted for their Law School programme. Now that incidents of violence are rampant in the North and with militants groups in the Niger-Delta, should the authorities continue to send these law graduates to campuses of the Law School located in these violence prone areas?
This issue came up recently at the Human Rights Conference organised by the Nigerian Bar Association. The issue is: with this insecurity in the country, if these students are posted to the North or to Bayelsa State, don’t they have a fundamental right to say no? They have a right to life and if the environment cannot protect their lives, they have a right to take their lives into their hands.
I think that as much as they want students to interact between the tribes and regions, just like the NYSC, for now people should be allowed to stay within their regions. They know their regions very well and when crisis comes, they know who they can run to. For now, law students should be allowed to stay in their regions for the Law School.
We had one of our students who had a first class and was posted to the Kano Campus of the Law School. During one of the riots two years ago she was caught up because there were no flights to Kano and there was a curfew imposed. Her mother had to prevail on her to stay back and she eventually missed part of the Law School programme. Her mother said she preferred having her daughter alive than going to Kano and losing her life. She had to go with the next batch and she is now in Lagos Campus. These are some of the things we experience.
The National Universities Commission has constantly accused law faculties of overshooting their admission quota. The result is that often times many law graduates from such institutions are not able to proceed to Law School and would have to wait for a year or two before they are admitted to Law School. What is responsible for this and how can the issue be addressed?
I think it’s a matter of indiscipline by the universities’ administration and by the faculty. Until the Council of Legal Education of which I am a member puts down its foot and says, ‘If you have a quota of 150, only that number will be admitted into law school’ most of these universities will not learn.
A university has a quota of 50 and they go ahead and admit 200 students, how do you ever want them to go on to Law School?
The Nigerian Law School is about to start a system where they will give every law student a number right from their 100 level. If the university has a quota of 150 the students will know their numbers right from the start, so if you are a student in a university that has a quota of 150 and you are not within that 150, then you automatically know that you are not a candidate for Law School. I don’t think any reasonable person will agree to stay in a system, knowing that you will not go to Law School!
I am proud to say that for the past 12 years, the faculty of law of the University of Ibadan has never flouted the rules on quota. The Vice Chancellor has received two recommendation letters from the Director-General of the Nigerian Law School on this. The VC would always put down his foot on quota and say that we cannot admit up to that number and he will defend it anywhere.
Some few years ago, many law faculties in Nigeria did not have full accreditation. Most had provisional accreditation and some universities don’t even have a single law professor. Are the rules too stringent that some law faculties are not able to meet up with these requirements for accreditation?
Every university wants to have a law faculty, but not every university is fit to have a law faculty. A university wants to have a law faculty and there are rules and regulations to follow, but some don’t even have the facilities for more than a secondary school! It doesn’t work that way.
The requirement is that a university must have a provisional accreditation before they even start a law faculty. Many universities will start their law faculties without the provisional accreditation. The rule of the Council of Legal Education is that once you do that, those students that had been admitted will never go to Law School and it is happening in some universities now.
Then, some universities don’t have the basic facilities for a law faculty. It’s not that the rules of the Council are too stringent, it’s just that many universities don’t strive to meet those rules and it doesn’t work that way.
The issue of law publications is one that has also been of concern. These days the number of law publications is dwindling and even those already published hardly get reviewed. What can be done about this?
I think it’s our responsibility as law academics to see to this issue of research. As law academics, we do teaching, we do research and we do administration. It is possible we all teach and we all research, but we may not all do administration.
It is therefore compulsory that for you to be able to teach effectively you must research. A law lecturer should be sensitive to what is happening in his environment. If there are new legal issues that are coming up, we should be able to address them.
Recently, the Evidence Act came out and I had to quickly react by comparing the old Evidence Act 2002 to the new Evidence Act 2011. This should be useful for legal practitioners out there to know that there is world of difference between the two. It’s not for those in practice to do this. It is for us in academics to bring out these new developments.
Incidentally, you heard when I was talking with my secretary about a new book that is coming out. Before now, we had Okonkwo and Naish. These were great men! A good book in Criminal Law. But when they were writing there wasn’t anything like genocide, terrorism, euthanasia and other recent trends in criminal law.
So, Honourable Justice Sonia Akinbiyi and I wrote a recent book on criminal law to be published by Evans Publishers, on recent updates in cases. Professor Okonkwo did a good job! But so many things have come up since that time that need to be addressed.
I think more Law teachers should do meaningful research, not just publishing anything at the backyard publishing houses, but with good publishers and with good research work.
There were complaints some years ago that some University lecturers engage in writing handouts and forcing their students to buy such handouts and we learnt that the NUC came down heavily on them at that time but we heard that the practice is still going on. What has been the situation in your faculty in this regard?
Like I earlier said, the clinical legal education method of teaching will not allow you to be giving handouts to students. It is more of students-centered learning. You will not believe it, these students are intelligent students. Give the students a chance; you are on your feet and a student will come to class and say, ‘Professor Bamgbose, yesterday on the internet, a case.’ So, if I am not on the internet and I am not abreast of what is happening, a student will come and floor me. But in those days the traditional way of teaching was to give students your brown-coloured handouts, the ones your lecturer used to teach you and then you will reproduce it and give it to the students and when you are saying ‘A’, the students say ‘B’ because they know what follows! That’s not teaching!
In the University of Ibadan, what we do is this. For instance, in my own class, I will give you a case of June 1 2013 and tell you to look at the citation from the 2013 Nigerian Weekly Law Report up till date. Before, when you give a case from an old date, the students would say ‘ha’! But nowadays, they simply google it or bring along the Weekly Law Report.
The handout method is for lazy lecturers. These are the kinds of people that we don’t want in academics. That means that if a student should ask anything outside the handout, you are not likely to know. You want to teleguide the students but here, it is the students that teleguide the lecturers. Handouts will only show to the students that really you don’t know anything.
There’s a view that the Criminal Code and the Penal Code should be unified because Nigeria has come to such a stage that both codes should be unified to have better criminal justice administration in the country. Do you share that view?
That should have been the ideal thing but presently in this country I don’t think we are ripe for it. I say that there should be a fusion but looking at the reality on ground, we will have some problems.
We were talking about Death Penalty the other time I chaired a committee for the country on Death Penalty and this issue came up that should it be abolished or not. It became a very sensitive issue. What one could say at that time was that let’s have a moratorium. When a particular law in a particular part of the country says it is part of their law and religion and you now say that it should be removed, then you are trying to bring about crisis. Let’s still leave it like that and see whether very soon, we may be able to come to terms with one common strategy but for now, the issue of religion is a very sensitive one. Looking at the codes, there are some aspects of religion there which some people may not want to compromise.
It has been argued that law teachers should be allowed to practice law because it will help to enhance their work and what they impart to students based on hands on experience. Some have argued against it that it will be a distraction for the teachers because some of them may go and take big briefs and may not have time for students. On which side of the divide do you stand?
Big question! The law now allows academics to practice, so it is not illegal unlike what was obtainable in the past. But I believe it is good. However, you must be able to discipline yourself and balance the two. There’s no way in which you will be involved in practice so heavily and you’ll think you want to move ahead in academics.
Here, in academics, it is either you publish or you perish. In practice, it is either you work hard and go to court or you perish. You cannot mix both of them. While you are outside and doing all the work, your publishing will suffer and the students are watching you.
Once you really get to the top in academics and you know what you want and you don’t want your students to make fun of you, you would not do anything to jeopardise it. You have been a Lecturer II and you remain a lecturer II so long because you are in practice, you won’t do so well in that practice because you still have to come to classes here and you will have to be running between the two. I think it is a good regulation for those that can balance it. I really would not advocate it for junior colleagues in the academics. Let them establish themselves and then you will be able to do the two at the same time.
But if at Lecturer II level you think you want to go into practice you will remain there and you won’t grow and your students who know who is who will make fun of you. Every three years, you are entitled to promotion that is if you publish. Those who do the two and are not able to balance it are those who use the academic work to support their practice - maybe because the money is regular as an academic but in legal practice you are not so sure of the income. Some may not even bother about the income but it will not augur well for such a professor.
It has also been argued that law teachers because of their background, patience and civility make good materials for the Bench. Examples of other jurisdictions like the US have been cited to back this view. There are a number of law professors at the US Supreme Court. A Senior Advocate even argued that the academics will perform better as they have not been exposed to the corruption at the lower Bench. Do you share the view?
I do. Two weeks ago, one of us, a lecturer, Mr. Lifu (now Justice Lifu) was just appointed as a Judge at the National Industrial Court. We also have Professors, Justice Owoade and Justice Diran Akintola who were picked from the University of Ife.
It is on record that these people are doing very well in writing their judgments. They know what research is. They know how to go deeply into the nitty-gritty of the case. With what has just happened in the University of Ibadan with Justice Lifu coming from the academics, we hope that more law lecturers will be appointed to the Bench.
A lot of arguments have trailed the introduction of technology into learning. Some have said that technology can be as much distraction to students as they are valuable. Some have even tied the decline in academic performances to new media. What’s your position on this?
To every angle, there are advantages and disadvantages. When you’re talking about technology, let’s look at it from the positive side. In those days when we were in the university, there was no ICT. But now, the interactive board must be there. To teach, you should not be restricted to your classroom. You should be able to go into a classroom in the US while you’re teaching. You should be able to google something while you’re teaching. That’s technology and that’s an advantage because learning is enhanced. It brings about collaboration and networking and then when you are in class, somebody says a particular thing you should be able to search for it on the internet. But now, the student must be disciplined; you cannot have your laptop in class and while the lecturer is teaching, you are on facebook when you should be looking up cases or references. That does not say that facebook and other platforms on the internet will not distract the students. There must be a balance.
The Jonathan administration is implementing a policy which disallows anyone without a Ph.D from becoming a university lecturer. Given that people like Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, does not have one and in fact, you do not have one, what is your opinion about this policy? Is it a step in the right direction or is it wrong-headed and unnecessary?
It is not the Jonathan Administration. It is the NUC policy. As you are aware, many of our Professors in those days did not have a Ph.d and they wrote all the textbooks we are using now; very sound and brilliant scholars. New rules and regulations are evolving all over the world. Many kicked against this policy but it is now in place. This does not mean that we cannot have brilliant scholars without a Ph.d coming in as visiting professors to the University. This Policy will only affect those coming in on permanent status
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