The National Universities Commission (NUC) has put on hold admissions into the law programme of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof. Julius Okojie, NUC’s Executive Secretary, has said.
Okojie said at an interactive dinner with newsmen on Thursday that the moratorium would be in place, pending the resolution of issues with the Council on Legal Education (CLE).
The CLE has persistently disallowed NOUN’s law graduates from being admitted into the Nigerian Law School.
The council has argued that the teaching and study of law was clinical and cannot be done by correspondence.
“This matter is being addressed because it is between us, CLE and the university.
“What we have done in the interim is stop new intake into that programme so that they do not have a backlog; we are addressing the issue.
“I must say that the law programme in National Open University (NOUN) was approved by the NUC; it is our responsibility.
“When CLE came up with the idea of no part time law, NOUN did not consider law a part time programme by their mode; so they did not stop the programme.’’
According to him, NOUN’s law programme is not conceived as part time as there is no need studying if one will not attend law school.
He urged CLE to admit NOUN’s law graduates and give the institution its quota in terms of how many students they could admit.
Okojie confirmed that Nigerian students in the Diaspora were transferring to local universities not just because of forex crisis but also for improving standard of university education.
