Chaos As Mass Failure Hits Law school

Mass failure recorded at the last Part II Final Bar Examination of the Nigerian Law School sparks controversy.

From Lagos to Abuja, Yola, Enugu, Kano, and Yenagoa campuses of the Nigerian Law School, gloom and frustration seem to be the second name of the majority of the students who sat for the 2013/ 2014 Part II Final Examination of the institution. In fact, the news of the moment is the mass failure recorded in the examination. The development has again brought to the fore issues surrounding the legal profession and the quality of education in the country. 

Of the over 7,176 registered students, only 3,418 passed according to the summary of the result posted on the NIS website, mynls.com. The Deputy Director-General and Head of Lagos Campus, Mrs. Toun Adebiyi, however confirmed to our correspondent on Monday that 56 per cent of the students passed, while 44 per cent failed the final examination that qualifies holders of the first professional degree in Law, LL.B, to be called to the Nigerian Bar.

Noting that some of the students stayed away from the exam, she added that of the over 1,000 candidates who repeated the exam, only 20 passed.

Findings by our correspondent reveal that of the successful candidates only four of them obtained a first class grade.

Two of the first class graduates were from the Abuja campus while Lagos and Bayelsa campuses recorded one each.

In the 2011/2012 academic session, while nine persons obtained first class, seven persons had the same grade in the 2012/2013 academic session. In the 2011/2012 academic session, 195 candidates graduated with a second-class upper division.

However, in this year’s examination, even from those who “managed” to sail through, the majority of them finished with conditional pass, pass and second class lower degrees. The Council of Legal Education, which oversees the NLS, does not award third class degrees as it obtains in the Nigerian university system.

A general rule in the NLS prescribes that any candidate who fails a minimum of two of the five courses – Criminal Litigation, Civil Litigation, Corporate Law Practice, Property Law Practice and Law in Practice – would repeat the academic year, while those who fail a single course would get a conditional pass and retake the single paper.

Many of the over 3,000 affected students, who would not be called to the Bar later in the year, claimed in separate interviews with our correspondent that the outcome of the examination did not reflect a true and accurate view of their performance.

Describing the way the Part II Final Bar Examination turned out, a student at the Lagos Campus, Folarin Michael, said he knew of six students who not only shared the same room but also failed in the examination.

Michael said although he obtained a second-class lower degree, he believed that the hard work and sacrifices he put into the programme would have earned him a better grade.

“I graduated as the best Law student from my university with a strong second class upper degree. To say I am upset by the grade awarded me by the Law School is an understatement.

“This is not good for my career and I am not satisfied with the result because I know my abilities. But when I consider the number of my friends and associates who failed, I just take heart and thank God for my condition,” he said.

Another student, Adekunle Adeyemi, who participated in the one-year programme at the Abuja campus, alleged that the Director-General of the NLS, Mr. Olanrewaju Onadeko, literally made it a singsong that he was going to up the standard.

According to Adeyemi, Onadeko, any time he interacted with students, always insisted that he would increase the traditional pass mark from 40 to 50, with a view to raising the standard of the falling legal education.

“Rather than encourage us in our chosen field of endeavour, the DG (Onadeko) would pelt us with insults that many of us have no business to be lawyers and that some of us should take to other professions – such as fashion designing and trading?

“That kind of statement is not expected from an education administrator. I do not know the rationale behind such a statement but the outcome is now evident and everyone can see the devastating blow he has dealt with our career.

“He even threatened to increase the pass mark from 40 to 50 but after the majority of us raised an eyebrow over the development, he promised that the new rule would not take effect during our studentship.

“But how are we so sure that that is not already being implemented with this mass failure we recorded?” Adeyemi added.

Blaming the failure on the NLS management, one of the students who finished with a conditional pass at the Enugu campus, Akeem Bello, accused the authorities of changing the rules of the game.

He argued that it appeared that the DG wanted to reduce the number of graduates when he cut down on the time allotted to the various examinations.

“Records don’t lie. It is on record that from 2008 till date, the time allocated to the 100-multi choice question which carries 25 marks per subject used to be 60 minutes.

“But in the era of the new DG everything has changed. We were allowed to take the MCQ for 50 minutes and this explains why the majority of us could not finish the examination.

“You can’t start a game and suddenly shift the goal post mid way. There was no prior information on this before the exam. This is never done,” Bello said.

Beyond the ugly experience of those trained in Nigeria, findings also show that of the over 500 foreign-trained Law graduates who participated in the programme, about 100 failed.

A United Kingdom-based legal practitioner, Idowu Akinlade, who was called to the English Bar over 10 years ago, was one of the overseas trained-lawyers who would not be called to the Nigerian Bar this year.

Speaking with our correspondent on the telephone from his base in London, the lawyer with experience in property law and civil litigation explained that it was surprising that he obtained a conditional pass.

Rejecting the result, he explained that “after doing all the cramming” at the law school, it was surprising that the DG would make the majority of them “scapegoats” under the guise of standardising legal education.

“I am not against reforms in the best interest of the legal profession but it is unfair for the umpire to change the rules without carrying everyone along in the first instance. The time we used for the exam was reduced.

“Again, the grading system is not transparent. If you input your details on the NLS portal to check your grades, you would never get to see the breakdown of your results in each of the courses taken. All you see is ‘Fail, Conditional Pass, Pass, Second Class Lower and all that’

“The funny aspect of it is that there is no opportunity for one to seek redress as it is a taboo. That is never done anywhere in the world and the DG and the management staff are supposed to be professionals.

“With all sense of responsibility, I make bold to say that the result credited to me is not a true reflection of my ability. This is a major setback as I have expended thousands of pounds relocating to Nigeria and staying on campus for about two years. I had the intention of starting a law firm back home in Nigeria,” he said.

Many of the participants claimed that they did not know how the authorities arrived at their final grades. While some hold the view that the authorities used arbitrary computation to arrive at the total scores, others posited that the school simply graded candidates based on the lowest score of the five courses taken.

Many of them also frown on the condition that it was a “taboo” for students to seek a review of their results. Our correspondent gathered that past administrations in the school never welcomed the idea of review except on a few cases described as “obvious circumstances”. The thinking, according to a source, is that it amounted to “unusual distraction”.

Meanwhile, Onadeko could not be reached on the telephone for comments as sources at the Council of Legal Education in Abuja explained that he was on an important assignment abroad.

When contacted, the deputy DG, Adebiyi distanced the management of the institution from the “massive failure.”

She, however, admitted that the grading of the examination underwent a new process compared to previous academic sessions.

The 1980 Law graduate of the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) explained that each script went through a three-stage grading and reviewing process that involved a senior lecturer, a deputy director and a director.

She added that the allegations levelled against the NLS that “we deliberately failed them” and that there was a conspiracy among the management staff to mark down the students were baseless and unfounded.

“There is a new DG at the Nigeria Law School. In the past, once a script is marked, the result is taken as the true performance of the particular student.

“But our current DG believes that students should have their scripts reviewed by an independent person to be sure that the marks awarded them really reflect their true performance.

“This year, the marking exercise, which lasted for a month, was very rigorous as each script was marked by a senior lecturer and reviewed by a deputy director and subsequently reviewed by a director. So each script was subjected to a very rigorous review.

“The results we released are definitely a reflection of the performance of the students. I have been reading all sorts of materials on the Internet about how we deliberately failed them. That is not true.

“They (the students) can always call for their scripts to be reviewed as from this session unlike in the past. Any student who is aggrieved or who feels that the result is not a true reflection of his or her performance should write to the DG and ask for a review,” Adebiyi said.

Promising that none of the students would be victimised, she added that rather than complain on the pages of newspapers or on social media, they should pay the requisite review fee and get their scripts re-appraised.

Adebiyi also refuted the claim that the pass mark had been shifted from 40 to 50 per cent.

She said, “The pass mark is still 40. For it to be shifted the Council of Legal Education must approve such a thing.”

The DDG, who blamed the poor performance squarely on the students, added that many of them showed apathy to their academic pursuits on campus.

“The Law School is not a joke. Many of them were very unserious. We had never had a troublesome set like that as far as I have been in the law school in the past 30 years.

“Many of them roam around and we expended so much time driving them to attend classes. And when they attend classes, they were busy chatting on social media or streaming videos live online.

“I wasn’t shocked by the outcome of the Final Bar exam; only that I was unhappy with the way the whole thing turned out. This current set would perform better than these ones that failed because they are very serious with their studies,” she added.