Director of Research at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Lagos, Professor Lanre Fagbohun, taught International Environmental Law and Policy at the Undergraduate and Post-graduate levels in the Faculty of Law of the Lagos State University. The legal icon, who has been in the ivory tower for about 25 years, speaks with Senior Correspondent, ONYEWUCHI OJINNAKA, on the poor result of the last Bar examinations nationwide and the need to restructure the curriculum and teaching method of universities.
How would you react to the abysmal results of the last Bar examinations which recorded over 60 per cent failure?
The result was a shock for so many people. I know that questions have been asked by different individuals about what went wrong. I will not say that I am privy to what happened, but the first question we will ask ourselves is, should it really come to us as a surprise? One of the things that I am aware of and that has been in the public domain for quite some time in relation to the Law School is the issue of leakage of examination papers. That was hitherto something that was never heard about in the history of the Law School. When they say question papers leaked before the exams, at the end of the day, it was beginning to affect the integrity of the exam of the Law School. So, when this happened, I told one of my colleagues that, perhaps, the system became very strict and the kind of loopholes that some students hitherto capitalised on were blocked.
If you look at the legal practice, you will see people who do not show an understanding of what they ought to have known at the Law School, particularly in terms of professional ethics. How do you conduct yourself in the profession? That is the one I am particular about. You will find that the standards have actually fallen over the years. Perhaps, the kind of loopholes that students had before through which they were able to cut corners and pass the exam have been blocked. It may be that we have actually seen the picture of where we are. The issue then will be, how do we restructure ourselves to ensure that we do things right.
Some people have said it may be a situation whereby the lecturers just decided to do mass failure for the students. That is not a usual thing. It is only if you had not been a lecturer that you would say a lecturer will sit down, look at his student who has passed his exam and fail that student. It would take a person who is heartless to do that.
What is the way out?
I am sure the management of the Law School must have started a holistic assessment of what went wrong. I am aware that they have restructured the curriculum of the Law School. Is it the case of misconduct, or is there disconnect of students with the new curriculum that has been put in place? If it has to do with a disconnect, they will need to understand where that disconnect is and be able to fill the gaps. It may be that the students have not been able to effectively integrate and align themselves into the new curriculum. The Law School must review the curriculum, to ensure that it is what operates in the 21st century. They must be able to benchmark the standard with what is happening in other developed jurisdictions. But when they review the curriculum, it must be done in a way that there will not be a backlash on the students. It must be able to work effectively.
Do you share the view that the curriculum of law faculties should be overhauled to prevent sending half-baked graduates to the Law School?
Certainly, there is need to look at the curriculum of the universities and the teaching style. I found that some of my colleagues still go to class to dictate notes. I do not remember when last I did that. I am sure it must have been more than a decade. By the time you go to class and you dictate notes, there is a limit to what the students can write within the space of time that is available.
What do you think about the view that law lecturers who combine teaching with active practice add extra value to students?
Let me say straight away that there is an advantage in allowing law lecturers to practise. The major advantage is that law is a living course. Let me give an example. You are a lecturer teaching evidence and you have never led a witness in evidence as to see, live, issues of the other party raising an objection. When the other party raises an objection, you must be able to think on your feet. If you have been involved in a live case in court or you have been part of a team that has been involved in it, the way you will tell the students will be different. You are telling them a story, they understand it. It makes it distant from the students, when you are always going to class to tell them what you have just read, without more.
When you are able to tell the students that on that day when Professor Koyinsola Ajayi raised the issue, Professor Osinbajo responded this way. When it came to looking at a particular section, this is what Joe-Kyari Gadzama said, and in his response, Wole Olanipekun said this. The students will be glued to you; they will understand it better. But I must say that, as it is with everything that is Nigeria, we abuse the situation. There are some of our colleagues who have abused that situation. They have forgotten totally that they have a responsibility to their students.
Again, you find some of our colleagues who will not attend lectures, when it is two weeks to the exam, they will go to class and do a crash programme. What they ought to teach for a whole semester, they will teach it in two weeks. That is wicked, that is unfair and it shows indiscipline on the part of the lecturer. So, if we say there is merit in allowing lecturers to practice, we must not lose sight of the fact that there are some lecturers who are abusing that privilege, and it is not fair on the system.
That is why there is need for us to have a mechanism for feedback. So that, if a lecturer is abusing the system, the students must be able to get back through the mechanism and report back to the system, without the fear that they will be victimised. If there is a mechanism in the system, students must be able to utilise the mechanism, such that if a lecturer is in the habit of not attending his lectures, the students will use that mechanism to report to the system. The name of the game has changed globally. We also must change the way we operate our system, otherwise we will be working towards the collapse of the system.
Do you agree to a suggestion that law should be a second degree course?
I do know that in some jurisdictions, law is a second degree course. I think at the level we are now, we do not need to say law should be a second degree course. How many lawyers do we have in the system at the moment? We don’t have up to 200,000 lawyers. If the population of Nigeria is about 170 million, and we are talking of 200,000 legal practitioners. That is still not enough for the system. When we talk of access to justice, 200,000 lawyers cannot give access to justice to 170 million people. But the major problem we have is that our system needs to be restructured.
For instance, if we have a system that says when you come out of Law School, and before you establish a firm of your own, you must undergo tutelage under a senior for certain number of years. There is no way a junior will go under a senior like Richard Akinjide, Wole Olanipekun or any of the other respected seniors and, at the end of the day, will not come out seasoned and with a culture of the profession. Many of us who boast of being senior today were under pupilage under respected seniors for so many years, and that is why we are where we are today. It is unfortunate that there are quite a number of seniors who are not treating the juniors well at all. Many juniors are miserable. There are also some seniors who do not understand what it means to be a mentor. They see it as a slave camp; a junior cannot talk to them. Why would you have a junior in your office who cannot talk to you?
Respect is earned. The moment they know that you are a basket of knowledge and they can gain from you, they will constantly continue to respect you. It is not the case that because you have allowed them the freedom to play and interact with you, they will no longer respect you. Some of us seniors are so arrogant; we carry the world on our shoulders. We believe we are better than every other person. We believe the juniors are dregs of the society, and that is the way we treat them. We do not even allow these juniors to see us as mentors. We should give them the opportunity to learn from us, otherwise the profession will be endangered in a very short while to come.
