Suffering and smiling in Lagos Law School…Students live in uncompleted building, faint in overcrowded classes

That fateful Tuesday, the new intakes of the Law School on Victoria Island, Lagos had resumed for lectures at 9 am as it was customary.

Dressed in white tops over black, they all hoped for a great day.

Before settling down for the day’s lecture, each of the 1,400 students queued up at five points to use the thumb-printing machines. That is the school’s idea of signing in for class everyday. Students are expected to do same to sign out of class everyday after lectures.

This done, the day’s lecture started as Dr. Suleiman took the podium and taught Civil Law. The school runs a lecture per day schedule, which should terminate by 2pm.

Suddenly, at about 1 pm, there was a stir from one end of the hall. Students raised the alarm that another female student had fainted out of suffocation.

That was the second time in two weeks in November that female law school students had fainted in the hall while receiving lectures, four other students had fainted consecutively and were rushed out of the lecture hall to get medical attention. One lady reportedly fainted on Thursday of the same week; two young men on Friday and another lady on Monday.

In each case, lecture was halted temporarily to resuscitate the students and rush them to the nearest hospital.

The fainting students were taken away in severe condition to the nearest hospital in a privately-owned vehicle. The school bus was said to lack fuel to serve the purpose when it mattered most.

Also, the school clinic could not manage the situation as it could barely boast of pain relieving medicines. Some students who gathered in clusters spoke about an earlier case of a lady, who had menstrual pain but could not get a pain relieving medicine from the clinic.

Seeing the conditions under which the incident occurred, some were heard saying, “We just resumed lectures in November and two students have fainted while in class. How many of us will be rushed to the hospital before the end of session?”

 The students are living with the deplorable state of the lecture theater, halls of residence, water, electricity, toilets among other failing facilities in the prestigious post-graduate training institution.

No doubt, the story of deprivation in the nation’s law school aptly paints the condition that the average Nigerian undergoes everyday.

But the question on the lips of many is, “Why pay so much for no comfort at all? Why  so much denial of rights in an institution which should raise people to fight for the rights of others?”

Each of the students in the law school paid N295,000 as school fees for a session. The breakdown of the amount should pay for tuition, accommodation and medicare among others.

With a current student population of 5,500 across the six campuses in Nigeria and each paying N295,000, the Nigerian Law School must have raked in over N1.6bn from the intakes.

This is apart from the fees for application forms for the incoming students which was also reviewed upward from N15,000 to N20,000.

Inside the law school lecture hall

Just one day in the lecture hall showed the level of urgency for action in the premier law school campus. Nothing outside may suggest this as many of the walls were recently painted to mark the 50th anniversary of the institution.

For about nine hours everyday, the poor-ventilated, stadium-styled lecture hall plays host to 1,400 students. That is the number of the 2013/2014 intakes, who resumed lectures in November this year.

The school management reportedly has penchant for admitting more students than the hall was originally designed to take.

Currently, about 100 students sit on white plastic chairs in addition to the immovable chairs and tables meant for use in the hall.

At the back side of the hall, towards the main entrances, there were students who used their laps as tables when taking lecture notes.

There are over 10 tired air conditioners in the hall but the students lamented that they never felt the cooling effect because scarcely would there be electricity supply to power them.

Usually, all the main doors of the hall and the iron-bar-fitted windows remain perpetually open. Still this is inadequate, especially because of the population of students.

Since the events of students fainting, it had become common sight to see scores of students taking a walk out of the hall to get some fresh air once it got really hot in the afternoon. When they do this, they miss part of the lectures because the lecturer won’t take a break because of them.

The effect of the overcrowding and poor ventilation speaks volumes because of the stench and carbondioxide that ooze out of the hall due to over-worked sweat glands.

Once the day’s lecture was over, fatigue, boredom and saturation were usually written all over the students, who still had to patiently endure another one and half hours to sign out for the day by a second thumb printing exercise.

The school expects students who intend to be called to the bar to fulfill a 75 per cent minimum class attendance, among other requirements.

Students said that everything about the hall appears to work against good learning conditions as it is so badly lit. This makes it difficult for the students to see their books clearly in class.

Students living in an uncompleted hostel

About 50 per cent of the population of students leave the lecture hall without a lodge to retire into. Right in the metropolitan city of Lagos, law school students live in an abandoned uncompleted hostel because they could not afford an extra cost to rent an apartment outside the campus. It was learnt that the uncompleted building was intended to serve as the third hostel facility01 for students but it had reportedly been under construction since 1984. This leaves the Lagos campus with two massive four storey buildings despite its growing population size. Although lecturers and the deputy director general do not live on campus, students say they are aware of this development.

For others who could afford to stay off campus, the journey back home starts after lectures and of course, they are faced with the traffic situation on the island.

Contrary to this scenario, in the headquarters campus in Abuja, lecturers, other employees and students live on campus.

While at least five students occupy a small room in the Lagos campus, one room is allocated to two students in Abuja.

In the Lagos campus currently, 10 students occupying two rooms share one toilet and bathroom. It was observed that the toilets and bathrooms equally called for urgent change.

The reverse is the case in Abuja campus, which sits on three hectares and provides recreation facilities for students’ relaxation.

In spite of this accommodation crisis, our correspondent saw a state-of-the-art office complex which construction is near completion in the heart of the campus. The building is said to belong to the Lagos branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, were likely to be old students of the law school.

Water crisis

A typical day for these students actually begins with scrambling for water to have a shower before going to the class. The school has no tap water, so students usually have to go and fetch water from the reservoirs situated to the right-hand side of the halls of residence. The ladies in particular, said they have not been finding this easy, especially those whose rooms are located upstairs.

Magi, a female student said, “Although the school authorities refused to make public the breakdown of the money we paid when resuming, we know that provision for basic amenities like this make it up. That money is not small. My parents went through a lot of hardship to gather that amount but they don’t even have the faintest idea what I have been going through here. This is cheating, yet they expect us to boldly defend other people’s rights when ours are being trampled on with impunity.

“It’s the same problem that we encounter daily with electricity. Usually, there’s no power supply and the school will only put on the generator for three hours in the evening after which we are left to manage for ourselves. We are expected to study volumes but everything is against good training here.”

A culture of silence and intimidation

For most students, the reality of these needs does not do as much harm as the fact that they are forbidden to talk about them.

The consequence is failure to graduate. Threats of risk to graduation are a daily menu, thus reducing the lawyers, who should be vibrant, to tamed pets.

Although some of them had muted the idea of forming a forum to officially approach the school management to lodge complaints on their plight, the question among them is, “Who will take the first step?”

 Any student who embarks on any form of protest  should consider himself “not fit and proper” to be called to the bar.

This has resulted in some lecturers habitually keeping students in the class till 3pm and beyond.

Another student said, “Can you imagine a lecturer in class seizing 15 mobile telephone sets belonging to law school students and saying that they may not get them back? Some of us only have to tolerate the abuses because we have been made to believe that it is a privilege to be a lawyer. It shouldn’t be. That could do harm to the psyche of some students.

“We then become victims of the same things we are supposed to have people conquer. I think it should change. There is a particular lecturer who often tells us that a fight against one lecturer is a fight against all. He tells us to quietly undergo our programmes and graduate or else we could be frustrated.”

Highlight of situation in Enugu, Kano campuses

•Accommodation- A student that registers late is either entitled to a poor accommodation or no accommodation. Usually, more students are admitted than the school can provide accommodation for.

•Water – Taps don’t run in the hostels. Most students employ the services of ‘Mai ruwa’ to fetch water especially those staying on the third and fourth floors. Even at that, the water is not safe for drinking. Most students buy table water to avoid typhoid and other water-related diseases.

•Despite paying for medicare as part of the school fee, students end up buying drugs as there are no drugs in the ‘clinic.’

•Library – There are no recent edition of books in the library as the library is filled with old publications.

•Food – Students are not allowed to cook, yet they eat what they see as most food sellers sell trash especially in Kano campus.

•Security – Campuses are not secured. In Enugu campus, anyone can enter and exit without being checked especially after lecture hours.

•Renovation – Some of the hostels in Enugu need renovation especially Adam and Eve hostel.

•Toilets – Two rooms comprising of at least 10 students share same toilet and bathroom in the Enugu campus but the case in Kano campus is worse.

•Snakes are students’ companions in Enugu and Kano campuses as the environment is bushy and nothing is being done about it. In the Kano campus students suffer lack of good water, accommodation, functioning library and lack of conducive lecture halls, poor furniture, poor electricity, lighting, banking facilities and inadequate medical facilities.

Buck passing over deterioration, falling standard at 50

In spite of all these realities, the Nigeria Law School rolled out the drums a few weeks ago to celebrate 50 years of its existence.

During the celebration, the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, who is a lawyer, was present and apparently aware of the needs, he gave an undisclosed monetary donation to purchase some mattresses for the students. Mr. Muiz Banire represented former Governor Bola Tinubu who on his part, promised to complete the 24-year-old abandoned hostel.

The league of Senior Advocates of Nigeria, among others also pooled resources to address the infrastructure problems in the Lagos campus.

Speaking in defence of the celebration at the event, the Chairman of the Local Organising Committee, Prof. Oyelowo Oyewo, of the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos, said that the objective of celebrating the Law School was to acknowledge the contributions of the Council on Legal Education and the Nigerian Law School to Nigeria’s legal system.

He said, “It is to acknowledge the contributions of the institution and the contribution of the Council of Legal Education to legal development in Nigeria because that is a monopoly they have been able to operate very well.

“So we thought that it is important to mark the 50th anniversary. And there should be some token of celebration that will be for the immediate and also some that will be for posterity.”

But Oyewo didn’t deny the challenges when he said it had become necessary for the law school to acknowledge that it could no longer continue to depend on government to attain the vision of producing world-class lawyers in this environment.

“We acknowledge infrastructure deficiencies which we believe the Alumni can support in improving,” Oyewo said.

The DDG of the Lagos campus of the NLS, Adebiyi, said the celebration of the silver jubilee of the institution was important, while stressing the need for better funding.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Director-General of the NLS, Dr. Tahir Mamman, recently acknowledged the decline but attributed the low quality of justice delivery in Nigeria to the poor quality of law graduates from the nation’s universities.

In his welcome address during the 50th anniversary celebration held in Abuja some weeks ago, Mamman decried the inability of the Law School to access intervention funds by donor agencies as one of the reasons for the poor infrastructure in the various campuses of the law school.

Mamman said the Law School had risen from eight graduates in 1963 to an average student population of 5,500 and a total of 85,060 lawyers produced so far.

He described the high cost of school fees at the Law School as a major challenge.

Brief history of the NLS

The Nigerian Law School was established by the Legal Education Act of 1962 to provide Nigerian legal education to foreign-trained lawyers, and to provide practical training for aspiring legal practitioners in Nigeria and the law school had so far trained and graduated over 85,060 lawyers.

Most of them are now successful lawyers, judges and experts in other sectors. Famous lawyers like Chief Gani Fawenhinmi (SAN), former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Muhammadu Uwais; former Senate President and now Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim, former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chibudom Nwuche, three incumbent governors – Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State and Liyel Imoke of Cross River State.  Former chairman of the Senate Education Committee and former President Goodluck Jonathan’s Special Adviser, Senator Joy Emordi;  former ministers – Solomon Ewuga, late Justice Oby Nwodo, Yomi Edu; former members of the House of Representatives – Chudi Offodile, Awaal Tukur and Patrick Osahon Obahiagbon were all former students of the Law School. Others include National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisah Metuh, and former member of the Enugu State House of Assembly and chairman of the Nigerian Tourism Development Board, Uche Anya.

 by Bosede Olusola-Obasa