Sylvester Udemezue
Dear Mr. Steve Sun,
Law and Society Forum (LSF) is a popular
WhatsApp Platform comprising a group of very senior and junior
Nigerian lawyers (resident within and outside Nigeria) committed to
discussions on how best to deploy law as an instrument of social
change for the overall progress of Nigeria and Nigerians. On 20
October 2018, at about 10.00pm, from the comfort of my study, I
read on LSF, a piece of commentary, marked “without
prejudice,” in which you (the author) did what may pass as
a critique on the recently released (2018) Nigerian Law School Bar
Final Exams and a requisition for the Nigerian Bar Association to
immediately demand some sort of explanation or clarification from
the Council of Legal Education (CLE) on why 161 Nigerian Law School
students could bag First Class in a Bar exam in which your humble
had earlier only managed to come out from with a 2.2 (Second Class,
Lower Division). Your commentary under reference appears also on
TheMetroLawyer blog under the caption,
“Lawyer Calls On Council Of Legal Education To Explain
Marking Scheme.” (See https://themetrolawyer.com/lawyer-calls-on-council-of-legal-education-to-explain-marking-scheme/)[1]. It
is also published on the Nairalawcom
under the heading, “Lawyer Calls On NLS To Furnish NBA With
Clarification On Recently Released Bar Results” (see
lawyer-calls-on-nls-to-furnish-nba-with-clarification-on-recently-released-bar-results/[2])
I had resolved to not respond to the piece, but the sweeping
allegations or groundless assumptions raised therein compelled me
to have a re-think, I being somewhat affected. Besides, as Winston
Churchill once said, “a lie may get halfway
around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants
on.” Vladimir Lenin put it more succinctly:
“a lie told often enough soon becomes accepted
as the truth.” So,
the earlier the falsehood was ousted and people’s minds disabused
of its fangs, pangs and claws, the better for our society, because,
as Sir Thomas Jefferson declared on December 08,
1822, in his Letter to James Smith, “man, once
surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against
absurdities, the most monstrous, and like a
ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such person,
gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of
reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”
Note however, my dear respected learned friend, Steve U. Nwankwo
(aka Steve Sun), that my response to you is strictly in my
personal capacity because I am not a spokesperson
for the Council of Legal Education or Nigerian Law School neither
do I have any fiat to speak on behalf of the Council/School.
First, you say you made a 2.2 (second class lower). I need you
to understand that it is your result— the outcome of your own
efforts during your bar final exams. Bar part 2 exams are a
garbage-in-garbage-out game in which what you put in determines
what you get in return. In other words, each student harvests by
way of results exactly what he or she has sown by way of legitimate
efforts during the bar final examinations. Nigerian Law School does
not assist any student to fail or to pass. No help whatsoever and
howsoever is offered to any student of the NLS to achieve anything
in the law School; I mean, nothing beyond the efforts deployed by
Lecturers and other staff members in class, on teaching the
students and providing them with relevant mentoring, supervision,
guide, counsel, and study materials in lines with extant rules and
regulations. So, these 161 students actually deserved the
First-Class Honours in the August 2018 bar final exams, which is
why they are placed in the First-Class category. There is no
“mago-mago.”
Second, you so wonder aloud as to whether the Nigerian Law
School has “secretly” departed from extant grading systems and
processes that you find it “fishy” when someone tells you
in regard to the 2018 bar final examination results that “one
million people made 1st class.” My dear friend, I
do not think anything has changed other than the level of
commitment, focus, and preparedness on the part of the students.
Nothing has changed regarding the grading system at the Nigerian
Law School. And nothing is shrouded in secrecy, because the School
runs an open-door program. If anything would soon change, it would
be to push the pass mark from the current 40% to 50% as being
proposed by Committees set by up by relevant regulatory
authorities.
In your article, Sir, you confess that you are yet to see any
breakdown of your own bar final results. Yet, you proceed in the
same breath to postulate with some air of certainty that it was
Corporate Law Practice (formerly referred to as Company
Law) that brought your grade down to 2.2. Your words:
“I didn’t see my scripts, but I’m pretty sure that what
landed me in 2:2 must’ve been Company Law….I’m also pretty sure i
must’ve scored up to and more than 90 in some of the other
courses.”
With due respect, yours are groundless assumptions. You do
not know what you do not know. Put differently, you’re wrong to
claim to know what you know you know not. How on earth could you be
“pretty sure” that (a) Corporate Law brought you down and that (b)
you must have scored up to 90% in some of the courses? Even those
who eventually make first class, how many of them had ever got up
to 90% in any course in the Law School bar final exams? Do not
forget that 70% is what it takes to get a first class. Let me
personally inform you that if 90% was the minimum requirement for
getting a first class, I doubt whether the number of candidates
that would ever have got the first class since the inception of the
school might be up to 10 persons altogether. Further, the way you
even describe Corporate Law Practice as “vast and tricky”
appears to send clear signals to the effect that you obviously had
during your time, gone into the exam hall for the bar final exams
feeling somehow already defeated. It’s therefore no surprise, even
to you, that you came out with 2.2 which, to me, is however not a
bad one at all, considering that, honestly, everyone need not make
first class in order to be successful. However, you would not
get to know the details of what you had done wrong during your bar
final exams unless you follow laid down processes and procedures to
get to know same. It’s easy. You know the processes. And until you
take relevant steps on how to get a breakdown of your result, your
assumptions here are baseless and may be interpreted by reasonable
and discerning persons as an attempt, on your part, to
unjustifiably deprecate and disparage your Alma Mater. In this
respect, I personally encourage you to not try to push down the
bridge that has carried you through.
What is more? Your statement “I’m calling on the
General Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association to write to the
CLE-NLS, requesting them to furnish the Bar forthwith with some
clarifications vis-à-vis (sic) the recently released
results” seems to amount to a requisition for the
Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to immediately demand an explanation
from the Nigerian Law School authorities on why 161 bar aspirants
had to get first class in 2018, a development you see as
“fishy,” although it is clear from your commentary that
this is for no reason other than that the same is unprecedented.
With due respect, Sir, your requisition is inappropriate and
bereft of any legal or other foundations. First, section 1 (1) of
the Legal Education (Consolidation) Act, 1976
establishes the CLE (Council of Legal Education) as “a
body corporate with perpetual succession and a common
seal,” while section 1 (2) of the same Act provides
that the CLE “shall have responsibility for the legal education of
persons seeking to become members of the legal profession” in
Nigeria. Note also that the CLE has the responsibility of
continuing legal education in Nigeria (under section 3 of the Act)
but this is not relevant here. Dear Mr Steve Sun, until this
statutory responsibility which appears exclusive is taken away from
the CLE by way of a repeal or an amendment of the Legal
Education (Consolidation) Act, the CLE does not owe you
any explanation on the steps it takes for purposes of professional
legal training of aspirants to the Nigerian bar or on the conduct
of its examinations, especially considering that section 2 (5) of
the same Act also expressly confers additional powers on the CLE
“to do such things as it considers expedient for the
purpose of performing its functions….”
A major point for you to take home, however, is that all the
pre-examination and post-examination processes and procedures in
the Nigerian Law School are conducted in a transparent manner, in
the sense that some other persons, institutions, regulators and
authorities (and not just the NLS lecturers alone), actively
participate in all or most of these bar final processes to ensure
that quality is assured, credibility sustained and merit
guaranteed. This has to be the case because, as I have
explained elsewhere in January 2017,
“Teaching in the Law School
under the New Curriculum … is aimed at producing lawyers who would
be in a position to measure up to contemporary benchmarks and
international best practices in the legal
profession…. the
system is designed to ensure
that only serious-minded people are enrolled into the legal
profession, which itself is rather tasking. Accordingly, success in
the Law School depends much more on hard work and determination
than on mere possession of talent; at the Nigerian Law School, hard
work would beat talent if talent does not work hard. There is no
room for anything goes; the School is not a dumping
ground for the “never-do-wells,” who try to get
enlisted into the legal profession through the back door.”
(See contemporary-training-at-the-nigerian-law-school-an-insiders-acounti/)[3].
Additionally, dear Steve Sun, are you not aware that the current
President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is the Ag.
Chairman of the Council of Legal Education (CLE)? So, when
you make a requisition for the NBA General Secretary to write to
seek clarifications from the CLE, what you’re saying in effect is
that the NBA General Secretary should write to the NBA
President for clarifications. A little research prior to your
write-up could have placed these basic pieces of information at
your disposal thereby, perhaps, making your outburst against the
Law School/CLE unnecessary. During your days at the NLS, there is
no doubt that you were properly equipped with basic legal research
skills. Your failure to deploy these skills to your advantage in
this instance appears to indicate that your article/Call under
consideration was not borne out of any genuine desire, in you,
towards correcting anything in the NLS (if anything is wrong).
Judging by the tone of your article, I am inclined to conclude
that you are lamenting and complaining as to why a result that came
years after your own NLS set could be or indeed was better than the
results of your set. That, my learned friend, is, with due respect,
a erroneous way to approach life. One, in my village, as in many
other Africa villages, the prayer of the elders and older ones is
usually that “those coming after us should be far
better than we are, perform better than we did and achieve better
than we have.” This is because the African tradition
is rooted in morality and our desire to have our future better than
our past and the present. Even in the Arab world, the proverb has
gained prominence, that “what is coming is better than
what is gone.” So, dear Steve Sun, just because the
past didn’t turn out like we wanted it to doesn’t mean the future
can’t be better than we imagined. Our pasts do not define our
future. So, we must not let the shadows of our past darken the
doorstep of our future. The standard and results of your law school
set/session cannot be a yardstick for measuring all future sets! To
accede to such line of reasoning, as you have adopted, is to
embrace relapse into deterioration and retrogression! The Council
of Legal (Nigerian Law School) and its successive generation of
students can only get better, not worse!
At this juncture, dear Mr Nwankwo, permit me to ask you this
all-important question. Would you have resorted to this
vituperative outburst against the CLE/NLS if the results of the
2018 Bar final Exams had come out abysmally poor, as in, say, not
even one first class was recorded? I guess not! Yes, you wouldn’t
because then, you would have been rejoicing that your juniors were
worse than you’re, which I suspect was your prayer. My dear, the
fact that you had gone to the Law School and seen your courses as
“vast and tricky,” and therefore too
difficult for you to surmount, doesn’t mean that succeeding
generations of our hardworking and daring students would see the
courses in the same light. Accordingly, the fact you had made 2:2
doesn’t mean anyone that goes beyond 2.2 must have done some
mago-mago, such that an investigation by NBA would become
necessary to lift the veil! If you felt the courses were hard,
during your time, I am happy to inform you that those coming after
you, such as the 2017/2018 set, felt otherwise and as such had gone
ahead to take the bull by the horn in order to prove that Nigerian
Law School does not withhold the first-class grade from any
candidate who rightfully deserves same. Your successors have proven
that it is exactly what one sows that one reaps as far as bar part
2 examinations are concerned. These guys have demonstrated that
there is nothing so tricky or vast about
Corporate Law Practice, Property Law Practice, Civil Litigation,
Criminal Litigation, and Professional Ethics & Skills that any
diligent, focused student cannot surmount. They have shown that, as
Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote, “the future belongs to those who
believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Hence, it is my humble
submission that the reason for the unmatched excellent performance
in the 2018 Bar Final Exams may be found in these words, credited
to an anonymous writer: “excellence can be obtained if
you …care more than others think is wise; …risk more than others
think is safe; …dream more than others think is practical; …expect
more than others think is possible.”
I must quickly note that it is quite unfortunate that
vilifying comments, such as yours, are coming out against the
NLS/CLE for rolling out such an unprecedentedly excellent result as
that of 2018. What a world? Who would have thought that a day such
as this would come, especially when in October 2014, Nigerian Law
School and its Lecturers had come under heavy assault from a
section of the undiscerning public, following the pathetic poor
performance of students of the 2013/2014 set in the bar final
examinations that had then just been released. See the news report,
“Outrage at Nigerian Law School as Over 3,500 Students Fail Bar
Exam”
(http://silverbirdtv.com/uncategorized/15876/outrage-at-nigerian-law-school-as-over-3500-students-fail-bar-exam/).
Even in 2017, headlines such as this were still flying around,
“Final Bar Exam, 2017: Why Mass Failure At Nigerian Law School
Persists (https://www.independent.ng/final-bar-exam-2017-why-mass-failure-at-nigerian-law-school-persists/)[4]. So you
see, the fact that some people still found face to criticize an
outstanding performance in 2018 lends credence to the saying that
criticism and reproach are just unavoidable and inescapable.
This is why Aristotle once suggested that the only way to escape
criticism is for one to just “do nothing, say nothing, be nothing,”
because the man who is anybody and who does anything is surely
going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. It is however
impossible to be nothing, to do nothing and to say nothing except
one is in a lifeless state. Experience has shown that
criticism is inescapable, for even in silence, inaction, and
nothingness, the world still criticizes; indeed, nothing is
complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism. A wiser
approach, therefore, is to accept from day one that criticism is a
part of the penalty for greatness even though it is no proof of
greatness. So, just do what you feel in your heart to be right –
for you will be criticized anyway. You will be damned if you do,
and damned if you don`t. Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was
right: “against criticism a man can neither protest nor
defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will
gradually yield to him.” Besides, the amount
of criticism one receives may correlate somewhat to the
amount of publicity one gets. Criticism may not be
agreeable, but it is necessary; criticism fulfils the same
function as pain in the human body in that it calls attention to an
unhealthy state of things. I would rather be attacked than
unnoticed; an assault upon a town is a bad thing; but
starving it is still worse. In the words of David Brinkley, a
successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the
bricks that others throw at him or her. In a speech delivered in
Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910, Sir Theodore Roosevelt put the
matter to rest when he observed as follows: “It is not the critic
who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,
or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is
marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs
and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms,
the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at
best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least
fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor
defeat.
In conclusion, dear respected learned colleague, achieving
success in bar final exams and coming out in flying colours is
pretty easy. And as I had noted in an exposé published on
January 29, 2017,
“…with focus, determination
and hard work, making a first class in the Law School is just as
easy as reciting ABCD….” (see
contemporary-training-at-the-nigerian-law-school-an-insiders-acounti/)[5].
May I, therefore, once more congratulate the 161
exceptional Red Scroll Holders who have proven beyond
question that Nigerian Law School Lecturers are not time-wasters,
and the 695 second class upper (2.1) aspirants who courageously
trailed the Red Scrolls in this “proof of evidence.” Not left out
are the 1,276 students that came out with 2.2 (second class lower)
to demonstrate to the world that the right to be a good lawyer
belongs to, not only those on top of the class in school, but also
to everyone who is determined and committed to just make it happen,
and the 2,501 students who got a PASS as proof that you don’t need
to be on top to get to the top in life. The best is yet to
come!
God bless Nigerian Law School
God bless Nigeria!
Thank you and best professional regards, Sir.
Sincerely, from yours in the struggle,
SYLVESTER UDEMEZUE (udems)
(udemsyl@hotmail.com)
References
- ^
https://themetrolawyer.com/lawyer-calls-on-council-of-legal-education-to-explain-marking-scheme/)
(themetrolawyer.com) - ^
lawyer-calls-on-nls-to-furnish-nba-with-clarification-on-recently-released-bar-results/
(nairalaw.com) - ^
contemporary-training-at-the-nigerian-law-school-an-insiders-acounti/)
(nairalaw.com) - ^
https://www.independent.ng/final-bar-exam-2017-why-mass-failure-at-nigerian-law-school-persists/)
(www.independent.ng) - ^
contemporary-training-at-the-nigerian-law-school-an-insiders-acounti/)
(nairalaw.com)