By Gabriel Dike
Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has urged the Federal Government to intervene and solve the problem of the Law graduates of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) not being admitted into the Nigerian Law School, describing it as a matter that needs to be tackled with all seriousness.
Obasanjo spoke when the Vice-chancellor of NOUN, Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu, paid him a courtesy call at his house in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Authorities of NOUN recently suspended admission into its Law degree programme because of a decision by the Council of Legal Education (CLE) to stop granting Law graduates from the university from gaining entry into the Law School and become lawyers. The former president, who last year graduated with a Master’s degree in Theology from NOUN, said: “When they told me about Law graduates, I asked who the early lawyers were? They sat at home and read and they ate their dinner… And then they qualified. We know, we were there with most of them in the 1950s,” he remarked Obasanjo argued that even though the university has achieved the success of becoming popular, there is ignorance of how it really works.
He said: “Whereas we have made the university popular, we still have a sort of what I call either ignorance or resistance. I try to explain, and I think we need to do this, people don’t know how the Open University works. And we need to make them know it.”
He called on the federal government to give more funding to NOUN in order to meet its objectives. “I think we have to persuade government to give you more. The point is that at this point in time money is scarce, but Open University is doing much more than any of the world universities is doing. I am not running down the other universities, what I’m saying is that the opportunity that Open University offers is much more than the opportunity that any of the world universities could offer,” he stressed.
Commenting on Adamu’s appointment to head NOUN, Obasanjo described him as “a square peg in a square hole as far as our university is concerned,” adding, “Your reputation goes along with you.”
Obasanjo commended the NOUN management for naming the university’s newly established Good Governance and Development Research Centre after him, saying he regarded it as an honour.
The former President also accepted NOUN’s invitation to present a lecture on the topic, “Leadership and Challenges of Development in Nigeria: The Way Forward” as part of the activities to mark his birthday in March. In his remarks, the VC expressed appreciation to Obasanjo for accepting the honour and informed him of the successes he has achieved since becoming the head of the largest university in the country.
Adamu described some of the steps he took in developing the university system, including the renaming of schools into faculties and introducing the election of deans and Heads of Department, as innovative.
The Director of the Olusegun Obasanjo Good Governance and Development Research Centre, Prof. A.Y. Shehu, in his speech, reminded the former president that the decision to establish the centre and name it after him was communicated to him by the former VC when he visited NOUN in Lagos in October 2014.
The decision was based on the recognition of the role Obasanjo played in creating institutions that deepened democracy and good governance within Nigeria, Africa and the world, he said.