Obasanjo pleads for NOUN students over Law School admission

…Seeks CJN’s intervention

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NIGERIA: APPARENTLY in defence of his alma mater, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has waded into the plight of law students of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).

A peeved Obasanjo said he had written the Council for Legal Education (CLE) to grant his fellow university mates rights to attend the Nigerian Law School, to enable them qualify and practice as lawyers.

The council, it was learnt, had barred the law graduates of the university from attending the Nigeria Law School, claiming that the law programme of NOUN was not a full class attendance but being run by correspondence.

“I’ve written to the CLE, but it seems some people out there didn’t get it right,” the ex-President who took a Diploma course in Theology in the university, fumed.  “They said the school of law is offering correspondence programmes and I said it to anyone I met that I graduated from the school and I am presently running my master and Ph.D in NOUN, so the notion is incorrect.”

Obasanjo expressed displeasure on the situation when he received representatives of the Law Students Assocation of Nigeria (LAWSAN) of NOUN, who paid him visit at his Abeokuta, Ogun State Hilltop residence.

Among those in attendance at the meeting were Mr Olutoyin Lawal (National President LAWSAN Alumni), Mr Paul Oyemike (National President, LAWSAN), Mr Oladipupo Ogunbote (Director of Mobilisation, South West of LAWSAN), Mr Sunday Soyombo and Deacon Dele Abidoye.

Obasanjo told his guests that he had enlisted the support of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, who succeeded Justice Aloma Muktar last year, to intervene on behalf of the troubled students.

“The meeting was a follow up to Baba Obasanjo’s visitation to the NOUN Abeokuta centre on 27th August 2014, when the school management sought his intervention on the law students’ admission row into the Nigeria Law School,” Ogunbote told the GatewayMail.

Obasanjo, who revived the NOUN while in office as President in 2002, said that to undermine a programme, among others in the university, is to undermine the whole NOUN, “and we will resist it.”

While saying that the university was a new one that continues to grow, the former president assured the intending lawyers – and other students of NOUN – to exercise patience with the management of the university, which was established in 1982, as accreditation of courses wasn’t automatic.