Free education will kill the system, says UNILAG don
By TOYIN OSAWE
Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Lining the walls of her office are pictures of different men in academic regalia and amidst them is her own potrait, the only woman among men. Call her a trailblazer, a record breaker or primus inter pares and everyone of those appellations would suit Professor C.K Agomo well, being the first female dean of the faculty of law, University of Lagos.

As the the dean of the number one Law Faculty in the nation, according to the NUC and Legal Education Council rankings, she bares her mind on many burning issues of legal education in the nation.

Didn’t see myself as Dean
Sometimes when I pray, I say to God, I never for one day woke up and said I wanted to be Dean, you expressly told me and other people, so, it’s your work.

As a professor, yes, that was my focus. . At the time when I was a senior lecturer, I registered for my Ph.D and it seemed the regulation at that time was that, if you’re on a programme, you will not be promoted. So, I decided that though I allowed that to lapse I’d rather work for my chair, aiming for professorial appointment. And to God be the glory, it came in its own good time.

NUC’s policy that only graduates will study Law
Personally, I see it as good development. I missed three years of education because of the civil war. So, by the time I got into the university, I was already mature – about 19 plus. Looking back , I see it as a blessing because I could appreciate what education was all about. As a child, I didn’t have any vision; I just had a local vision to teach in a nursing school, live a parochial life or whatever. I didn’t really think far then.

Law, like Medicine, is a profession. You have power to keep somebody alive or sentenced to death depending on your skills, how well you master the art of your trade. I think it needs matured minds.
In the past few weeks I’ve had cause to tell parents that we deny our children their youths. A 15-year-old has completed his secondary education and is ready to go into the university, but that child is still a child! Yes, there are a few exceptions who are matured but I don’t think the bulk appreciates what it takes.

So, just like in the American system where you must have a degree in liberal Arts (B.A) or related fields before you can be admitted to read law, so also for Medicine. You must have a first degree before you can be admitted to read these courses. It’s a maturing process. That’s the way I see it.
I appreciate the argument that, ‘what will happen to those ones just coming out of school, what would we do with them?’ Then I respond that maybe we can use pilot schemes with first generation universities like Unilag or some others. When we use a pilot scheme, then we’ll see how it would work out.
University of Lagos had taken that decision many years ago. I think it was during the IBB regime that we decided that law will be a post-graduate course. But government later came out with a policy that said ‘no’ to that idea.

So, if they are thinking that way, I think it’s a good idea. But we need not come suddenly, like abolishing it throughout. Maybe we can use Unilag or one or two other first generation universities with an established staff record.

Some have asked me, where we will get the staff and if we’ll have enough graduates. I tell them we have more than enough applications from graduates. I remember in 1995/96 when I was sub-dean, we had about 300 applications from graduates with second class lower. Usually our cut-off is first class and in the absence of that, second class upper, we don’t even touch second class lower list. It’s only in the days of discretion, that we’ll consider them. And even because of quota we don’t take many of the second class upper applicants. So, for us, the issue of getting enough won’t arise. What we need is quality control, how to maintain the standards.

Then even if we don’t see degree holders we can bring it down to A’Levels , because that’s how it was before and the quality was different. Before the 6-3-3-4, it was A’Levels just like in England and the quality was different, so we can re-introduce it for law. I still think it’s a good development and I’m in support of it.

Production of half-baked lawyers
I think I’ll attribute the problem to the system. We need to go down to the educational system. Those who come up to read Law started from somewhere. They were taught at the primary school and secondary school before they came up to the university. So, you cannot, in five years or four overturn what has been faulty from the foundation. The bible says, if the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do? If the foundation is faulty, whatever you build on it will not endure. I don’t think the blame should rest squarely on tertiary institutions. We need to look at the whole educational system.
6-3-3-4

I don’t think I understand it well, maybe it’s a good idea. However, the practical application leaves much to be desired. The six is the primary stage, the ‘first three’(JS education), the way the scheme is devised presupposes that some people may not go on to the ‘second three’but to the technical schools and colleges, but is that happening? Everybody is pushed on and the rat-race for paper qualification continues. And that’s why you have all these atrocities in the name of cheating just to make the grades to enter university.

It’s a good idea but one not being practicalised. Thus it leaves a question mark. Some people have advocated that A’Levels should be re-introduced, that we should go back to Upper Six and I agree with that. I recall that when I was in secondary school, we were taught by seniors who did A’Levels and were waiting for their university posting which usually took about nine months. And these people were sound.

But this 6-3-3-4, is neither here nor there. It’s like lower six without the attendant benefiits or specifics of upper six as advanced level and is still part of your SSCE. So what system do you fit into, the American system? It’s definitely not the English system.

Good students will always be good, regardless of the system anywhere. But I’m learning everyday that it is not the yardstick for measuring success or failure. It is the bulk, the average students who need the right environment that should be the yardstcik for measuring the success or failure of any system. Look at the bulk , is it working?

Inability of law graduates to enter law school
Let me say that it doesn’t apply to the University of Lagos. We’ve never been affected barring technical problems, like a particular student’s result not being ready at the time the law school list is being prepared. Everybody who is qualified gets a form. We don’t charge a kobo extra. We strictly comply with what the law school prescribes and, in fact, unused forms are returned. We’ve never really exhausted our quota.

The unfortunate incident of law graduates inability to get into the law school has to do with over admission; exceeding the quota. The Council on Legal Education gives the quota, so thus the NUC. For instance, NUC gives us a quota of about 250. And you’ll discover that, by the time the students graduate, we never have up to that figure in the final year going to law school. We have a higher quota from the Legal Education Council, being the number one law faculty in the country with full accreditation by the council and NUC.

We have a higher quota that takes care of both day and evening students and we’ve never exceeded that quota. The only year there was a problem was in 1998 but you’ll discover that the system has a way of easing out the problem. All of them don’t graduate at the same time. Some are still in the same system. Some in that set have just been called to the bar, some are gone and some joined this set that has just been admitted to the law school. So, the system has a way of easing out itself. There has been no time that we had the problem of more students than the forms made available to us.
Thus a situation where a faculty has a quota of 60 and you admit 400, 300 or 200, where do you think those extra would go? Then ask the qusestion, who is to suffer. So there must be a way to solve the problem.
But I always tell my student that I am here for them. Let’s both accept our responsibilities. You as a student should accept your responsibility. And we the teachers accept ours. Let us learn to do what we are supposed to do, when and how. Let’s not keep parrying it off, looking for the gremlins; it’s somebody’s baby not mine. If we’ve gone wrong, then let’s face it. Let each faculty, each university go back to the drawing board. Like the NUC directive says, if you admit one extra over your quota your accreditation will be withdrawn or you will not be given at all.

The pressure is so much in the system that everyone wants their children to read law. They keep pleading that their children should be admitted. Thank God we don’t have discretion anymore, since 1999, so the issue does not arise. All we have to say is, ‘sorry there is no discretion’. We operate merit within merit, National merit is 45 per cent. Merit in catchment (that is the six geo-political zone), western states that form the catchment area of the University of Lagos. You take the number one assigned to these states, then you take the educationally less developed states. So it is merit within merit. That’s what we’ve been operating since 1999 when this present government abolished discretion. So we don’t have that problem of over admission, thus no problem of backlog.

10 year ban on the establishment of law faculties
This is about the second year of the ban. And as a member of the council, I wouldn’t say the council was wrong even though I wasn’t a member when the decision was taken. But I’m bound by that decision because by virtue of the fact that I’m Dean, I’m a member of the Council on Legal Education.

But I want to say that establishing a law faculty is not a joke. It takes much setting up a law faculty or College of Medicine and Engineering. It is not just a question of I’m setting up a law faculty. It takes much to establish a law faculty, to equip a library, the offices of the lecturers and so on. I think it is something that could be reviewed from time to time. In terms of capacity of the institution, manpower, do you have the qualified staff, or the facilities? I think these things should be looked at before you talk of establishing a law faculty. Some institutions like Covenant University , which is coming up to be the best, they don’t have a law faculty and I don’t know if they are agitating. You can understand if Babcock is agitating because it had been there before the private universities came. It had been established and if it decides to start a law faculty today, I don’t think it won’t be able to carry it through.

I think when the time is ripe, it is something that should be looked at on individual basis. Look at the capacity, the ability, the facilities and the funding. Establishing a law faculty is not a joke. The mere fact that a new university comes on board should not automatically translate to a law faculty being established.

If you go abroad, institutions specialise. They look at their locality, their strenght, the area where they’ll be able to make more impact and concentrate on those areas. Nevertheless , when the time comes for the policy to be reviewed, it should not be a blanket thing. It should be according to the need, what each faculty has. It should be accredited from time to time to know whether the university has what it takes to establish and sustain it, make it viable. This is purely my own personal opinion, not an official one because I am in no position to give one.

2005 universities ranking
Though there are many criteria, it is sad that no African University made the top 200 of the world’s best universities. What we need do is to look at those criteria and ask ourselves, how come no African university made it? What can we do to get there?

Universities don’t exist in isolation. They are part of the general society. For example, we talk of infrastructure, facilities, basic things like electricity. For example, we’ve done our local area networking here. We’re already on-line but it is the dial-up system. We want to use optic fibre, VSAT or whatever, so that we can have unrestricted research access and subscribe to on-line journals so that we can be up- to- date, up- to -world standard. But how many times do we have electricity supply? And that is a basic facility we need.

There are so many other things – talk of over admission, overcrowding, underfunding, etc. If you go to the hostels, what facilities are there? How up to date are our libraries? Some are trying but do we have the funding to sustain them? So it’s a general policy which boils down to the policy.

The isssue of educational policy comes up. Is it really a priority in this country? If it is a number one priority, things will change, though not overnight. It is about setting goals and following them. Like when we talk about the 6-3-3-4 system, at the technical education level we need to put things in place so that people can find where they belong. So, there’s no reason why in a few years we can’t get into the ranking. But we need to do the first things first.

A child does does not get up today and start running tomorrow. You can’t compete unequally. For example, a child from a poor home, who hardly gets a square meal a day, no books and you expect him to come and compete on equal terms with the child that has all the comforts and facilities at his disposal. There is a basic inequality there.You must be able to to bring that child from the deprived, underprivileged background up to some minimum acceptable level for that child to compete favourably. So we must be serious in our thinking towards education. I don’t think the government has the capacity to fund education 100 per cent.

Free education will kill the system
There must be some contribution. I always say this, we are ready to pay so much for our children to go to private nursery, primary and secondary schools but when it comes to university(tertiary), we start singing free education and it does not make sense to me.

Of course, we always talk of disparity in the system. In the 70s, I wasn’t in the country but I know there was a system of the Students Loan Board and that is what is sustaining education abroad. In places like the US and the UK, education is not free. In the US, when a law graduate leaves the university, he is indebted maybe to the tune of about 80,000 dollars. But the student had the facility to acquire that education and of course will have the ability to pay back. A medical student will be indebted much more.
In the 70s people were able to go through the system by obtaining a loan from the students loan board, scholarship boards and so on. It is a question of putting in place the facilities to make everyone compete.
Poverty will always be there, it had been done before. Everyone talks about sharing the national cake but nobody wants to know how it is being baked. The whole system needs to be overhauled.

For instance, the tax sytem, how many people are actually paying tax. We are in the system and our tax is deducted using the PAYE system but what of the businessman that earns millions? How much does he pay or does he even pay? In the US you see what happens with tax evasion. When they catch you, you’re in for it – both the high and low. That’s what happens in the UK and other advanced countries. It is from the tax that they provide all these basic infrastructure for these institutions to make them work.
So, before you say, pay fees, you must ask how are we going to cater for those who are brilliant but without capacity to pay.

There must be structures on ground to take care of those people. There’s no how government can fund education 100 per cent and there is no how a university’s internally generated income will bridge the gap. Talk of hostel accomodation, the students pay N90 but you’ll be amazed at the sums being bandied around by the same students who paid N90. It is all hypocrisy. Let’s be honest.

This is the area we need a parents forum. Let’s talk about it. Let’s understand ourselves because the problem is communication breakdown. Let’s keep talking. It is not something we slap overnight. We need to ask ourselves what do we input into the system and what do we want out of it? How do we bake the cake? We should talk about that before we talk about how to share. We all must accept that we are part of this enterprise called Nigeria. We are the government – you and me. Let ‘s stop talking about government as Aso Rock and personalising it as Obasanjo. Like I always tell my people here, they are institutions – when I leave, the office stays.

But we need to sustain it. Whether or not it is going to be healthy or continues depends on what we put into it and how we see it and relate to it. So sooner or later we need to face the issue of fees. We must talk about it objectively, honestly, not using it as a gimmick, not being afraid.