About one in five students failed the recent law school examination and will not be called to the bar, official results show.
The results show that 23. 6 per cent of students who sat for the final examination conducted by the Nigerian Law School will not make it to the Nigerian Bar Association this June.
The figure represents 720 candidates who sat for the examination held in April.
Potential candidates to the bar must sit and pass the final examination by the Nigerian Law School, to be qualified for the call to bar, scheduled to take place on June 12.
A statement from the Director General of the law school, Olanrewaju Anadeko, said 73 per cent of those who took part in the examination in April passed it.
Out of 3,056 candidates who partook in the examination this year, 2, 232 candidates passed, while 104 of them had conditional passes, apart from the 720 candidates who failed the examination, the statement said.
According to Section four of the Legal Practitioners Act, candidates must meet all other requirements to qualify for the call to bar.
Section 4 (2) of the Act implies that the 104 candidates with conditional passes, representing 3.4 per cent of the total number of candidates, cannot rely solely on their kind of result to make it to bar.
Information provided by the school states that after concluding their study at the Nigerian Law School, successful candidates are given their certificates from the council and then called to bar by the Body of Benchers, ‘subject to the provisions of the Legal Practitioners Act’.
The Council of Legal Education is the regulatory body for the Nigeria Law School, which must be attended by persons willing to study law in Nigeria.
It also determines the steps to be taken by persons who have obtained a university degree in law from a foreign institution and are willing to practice as lawyers in Nigeria.
The Nigerian law school and the Council of Legal Education were established in 1962, following the enactment of the Legal Education Act to ensure the study of the Nigerian customary law by prospective members of the bench.
