Abstract
Teachers, whether of law or other subjects, are saddled with the responsibility of systematic presentation of facts, ideas, skills and techniques to students. In ancient times, this responsibility was considered sacred; and to the teacher, it was a rare privilege.
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Notes
- 1.
Ryan Kevin, ‘Teaching’ Microsoft Corporation, 2009 [DVD], Redmond, WA, Microsoft Corporation, 2008.
- 2.
C. Gordon Post, An Introduction to the Law (A Spectrum Book, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963) pp. 7–10.
- 3.
See Bryan A. Garner (ed.), Black’s Law Dictionary (WEST Thomas Reuters, 9th ed., 2009) pp. 962–963.
- 4.
J.B. Daodu, SAN, ‘Speech by J.B. Daodu, SAN, President of the Nigerian Bar Association at the Inauguration of 4 Committees’ in Abuja, Nigeria, on October 22, 2010. Daodu observed in respect of Legal Education (Reform) Committee, thus: ‘The future of the legal profession (Bar and Bench), particularly its survival, is linked to the quality of legal education received by a lawyer or law student in his formative years, precisely in the University and the Law School. The complaints that standards of every facet of legal practice is falling is real. The solution does not just lie in vowing to arrest the deteriorating situation. There must be an assessment of the scope of the damage to our legal education system before we can mete out remedial action….’, available at: http://www.nba.org.ng/web/speech-by-j-b-daudu-san-president-of-the-nigerian-bar-association-at-the-inauguration-of-4-committees.html [accessed on February 4, 2013]. It is of concern here that since 2010 when the Committee was established, the outcome has not yet been publicized, or particularly, brought to the knowledge of law faculties and the Nigerian Law School, for their observation and instruction.
- 5.
Susan Douglas, ‘Student Engagement, Problem Based Learning and Teaching Law to Business Students’, 6(1) e-Journal of Business Education & Scholarship of Teaching, 2012, pp. 33–47, available at: http://www.eJbest.org/upload/eJBEST_Douglas_2012.pdf [accessed on January 15, 2013].
- 6.
Ibid. See alsoAustralian Council for Educational Research (ACER) 2007–2009, ‘Australasian Student Engagement Report’. available at: http://www.acer.edu.au/research/ausse/reports [accessed on February 1, 2013].
- 7.
Sally Wehmeier (ed.), Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 6th ed., 2000) at 592.
- 8.
Susan Douglas, supra note 5, at 34.
- 9.
See M.O. Onolaja, JCA, ‘Problem of Legal Education in Nigeria’, available at: http://www.alimiandco.com/publications/ACCREDITATION%20AND%20LEGAL%20EDUCATION%20IN%20NIGERIA.pdf [accessed on January 21, 2013]. The author (then a Justice of the Nigerian Court of Appeal) further noted, rightly so, that ‘the quality of judicial decisions and the coherence of the reasoning underlying a judgment depend upon the quality of the argument presented to the Court and upon the ability of the Judge. All these depend upon the quality of our legal education’.
- 10.
Id., at 38, wherein she also referred to P. Ramsden, Learning to Teach in Higher Education (Routledge Falmer, 2nd ed., 2005) at 22; Therein, critical thinking is defined as the ability to do some or all of the following: ‘identify central issues and assumptions in an argument, recognize important relationships, make correct inferences from data, deduce conclusions from information or data provided, interpret whether conclusions are warranted on the basis of the data given and evaluate evidence or authority’.
- 11.
Gerald F. Hess, ‘Improving Teaching and Learning in Law School: Faculty Development Research, Principles and Programs’, 12(1) Widener Law Review, 2006, at 455, where the author observed that: ‘Many college teachers report that student evaluations provide useful feedback that leads to improvements in teaching. A legal educator concludes that written student comments on evaluations can provide teachers with formative feedback and helpful suggestions for improvement in areas such as the teacher’s clarity, delivery, organization, punctuality, fairness, demeanour, empathy and availability outside of class’.
- 12.
Tahir Mamman, ‘The Globalization of Legal Practice: The Challenges for Legal Education in Nigeria’, being paper delivered by Dr. Tahir Mamman—Director General, Nigerian Law School, at the 2nd Annual Business Luncheon of S.P.A. Ajibade & Co, Legal Practitioners on Thursday 19th November 2009, available at: http://www.nigerianlawguru.com/articles/general/THE%20GLOBALISATION%20OF%20LEGAL%20PRACTICE.pdf, at 23 [visited on February 4, 2013]; The author corroborated the fact that ‘the aim of legal education as noted earlier may be a process of ‘transmitting knowledge and inculcating a method of thinking’ by which each student should in the course of his studies obtain two things: a general survey of his field, and a detailed map of selected areas, selected by him or for him’.
- 13.
For instance, a Professor becoming a counsellor in the local government, or becoming a special adviser to a state government, or local government chairman. For purpose of clarity, this is not to suggest a condemnation of academics being interested or actually taking part in partisan politics. The point being made here is that teaching as first love, and the passion it requires is long lost. What is left is substantially a matter of convenience.
- 14.
Gerald F. Hess, supra note 11, at 447; the author noted that ‘Another misconception is that good teachers are born, not made. However, research shows that successful teachers learn how to teach and continue to improve their instructional skills and pedagogical knowledge by working on them over time’. See also Okom M.P. and Udoaka E.E., ‘Recruitment of Law Academic Staff in the twenty-first Century’, being a paper presented at the 43rd Annual Conference of the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) Legal Education in the twenty-first Century, held 17–20 May 2010, at Kogi State University, Anyigba; to the effect, among others, that ‘not every recipient of learning, knowledge, instruction and information has the capacity to dispense it. And the quality of knowledge dispensed is directly related to the quality of those dispensing it’, at 568 of the Proceedings.
- 15.
The Nigerian Law School is the central educational institution that moderates the examination that qualifies Nigerian Law graduates to becoming solicitors and barristers. The school is overseen by the Nigerian Council of Legal Education established by virtue of the Legal Education (Consolidation, Etc) Act, as contained in CAP L10, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, at Section 1. Law undergraduates are required to successfully complete their LL.B degree programme first, before they would be eligible to proceed to the Nigerian Law School for its mandatory one-year Barrister-at-Law programme, which qualifies successful graduates therefrom to practice as Barristers and Solicitors of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
- 16.
Reisman W. Michael, ‘Designing Curricula: Making Legal Education Continuously Effective and Relevant for the twenty-first Century’, 17 Cumberland Law Review, 1986–1987, at 834, available at: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/756 [accessed on February 4, 2013]; There, the author reiterated that ‘the formula I propose is quite simple—though its implementation can pose awesome problems. Curriculum and law school structure, as I have said, are tools for training decision specialists to perform indispensable decision functions in an industrial and science-based civilization in the next generation’.
- 17.
Being propositioned by the National Universities Commission—the body that has the responsibility, inter alia, of overseeing the activities of Nigerian Universities, established by virtue of the National Universities Commission Act, as contained in CAP. N81, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.
- 18.
Whereas, there are five parts/levels—1 to 5—in the LL.B programme.
- 19.
Faculty of Law Handbook (2006–2008), Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, pp. 8–18; where the core Law courses are listed to include: Legal Method (Part 1); Law of Contract, Constitutional Law, Nigerian Legal System (Part 2); Commercial Law, Law of Torts, Criminal Law (Part 3); Land Law, Equity and Trust, Law of Evidence (Part 4); and Law of Business Association, Jurisprudence and Legal Theory, Long Essay (Part 5). There is also a list of restricted and special electives from which Law Students are expected to choose courses, in fulfilling the requirements for an LL.B degree. See also Tahir Mamman, supra note 12, pp. 9–11; R. Aduche Wokocha, ‘The Challenges of Legal Education in Nigeria: The Way Forward’ in Web Journal of Current Legal Issues [2008] 3 Web JCLI, available at: http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/2008/issue3/wokocha3.html [accessed on February 4, 2013]; where he also listed some of the courses enumerated above, as required for an LL.B degree, from the perspective and as customized by his own Institution/University; and Chima Umezuruike, ‘Reform of Legal Education and the Legal Profession in twenty-first Century Nigeria’, available at: http://www.thenigeriabusiness.com/column7.html [accessed on February 4, 2013].
- 20.
See R. Aduche Wokocha, Ibid. It is also important to observe, as buttressed by the author, that some of the ‘favour currying effort’ is in order to please kith and kin, political office holders or University financiers; and sometime for financial and/or material gains.
- 21.
Gerald F. Hess, supra note 11, at 451, where he propositioned that, ‘Universities and law schools have traditions of supporting scholarship with summer stipends, course reductions, release time, and preferential scheduling. The same rewards can support faculty development and increase faculty members’ incentives to work on improving their teacher. In academia, among the most significant rewards are tenure and promotion. Schools that are serious about the value of teaching excellence in tenure and promotion decisions will use the faculty development process to help faculty members succeed’.
- 22.
Which in some respect is regarded as service to the university community, and which is only rewarded or counts for promotion, mostly at the professorial level.
- 23.
Barbara Glesner Fines, ‘Classroom Assessment Techniques for Law School Teaching’, Teaching and Learning Law Page, available at: http://www.law2.umkc.edu/faculty/profiles/glesnerfines/cats.htm [accessed on January 21, 2013].
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Id., pp. 4–5, Where Barbara G. Fines advocated the use of electronic devices in the teaching of law, as a way of facilitating and/or enhancing students’ assessment and ability to learn. See also Joash Amupitan, et al., ‘ICT in twenty-first Century Legal Education’, being a paper presented at the 43rd Annual Conference of the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT), Legal Education in the twenty-first Century, held 17–20 May 2010 at Kogi State University, Anyigba, at 346 of the Proceedings.
- 26.
Joash Amupitan, Id., at 346, where the authors observed that, ‘for ICT to be successfully used in teaching and research in Law, the provision of reliable infrastructure is a critical success factor. The infrastructure referred here includes a system that ensures regular and dependable power supply, uninterrupted internet access at critical locations of the campus, including staff residences, and a good network of computers’.
- 27.
Emphasis here on sight challenge does not necessarily place this above other physical challenges that may exist; this is however, because of this writer’s personal experience. In this situation, the challenged student is left completely at the mercy of kind hearted lecturers and fellow students: at lectures and examinations; since the Institution has no specific provision, consideration or plan for such students, in order to ameliorate their plight (in the hostels, classrooms, and everywhere within the university campus).
- 28.
Usually, private educational institutions in Nigeria are highly commercialized; and there seems to be an unspoken or unwritten understand: that having paid so much, students are not expected to fail, under whatever circumstance.
- 29.
See, for example, the Obafemi Awolowo University (Transitional Provisions) Act, CAP. O2, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, where it states in the preamble that ‘all references in the Law to the Visitor shall be construed as references to the President; and the power to appoint the Vice-Chancellor of the University shall vest in the President’. It states further in Part II, Section 6 which describes the Visitor and his functions, that ‘the Visitor may from time to time conduct a visitation of the University in person, or after consultation with the Chancellor, direct that the same shall be conducted by such person or persons as he may appoint in that behalf, for the purpose of advising on the effective fulfillment of the objects and the due exercise of the functions of the University as prescribed by law’.
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Opadere, O.S. (2018). Problems and Challenges Bedeviling Law Teachers in Developing Societies. In: Nirmal, B., Singh, R. (eds) Contemporary Issues in International Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6277-3_37
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