The House of Representatives on Wednesday asked the Council of Legal Education to halt the recent 60 per cent fee increase for the Nigerian Law School (NLS).
Adopting a motion by the Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda, read on his behalf by Ginger Owusibe, the House asked its committees on Justice, Tertiary Education and Services, to explore solutions to the issue at hand and report back within two weeks.
Chinda described the NLS as a medium through which the Council of Legal Education regulates the legal education of persons seeking to become members of the legal profession, as provided for in Section 1(2) of the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc.) Act Cap. L10, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.
The lawmaker was concerned that the Council of Legal Education approved a 60 per cent increase in fees from N296,000 to N476,000 for the 2023/2024 Bar Part II academic session. He noted that the 2023–2024 Bar Part II Academic session began in January 2024, with no time given to prospective students to raise the balance.
Chinda also lamented that Nigeria is facing a 27.33 per cent inflation rate, as reported by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which is projected by Trade Economics to rise to 30 per cent. He thus warned that unless immediate steps are taken to strike a balance between the Council’s need to provide quality services and the prospective students’ abilities to afford an increment, the country will see a high decrease in the number of NLS graduates, resulting to a decrease in the number of lawyers in the next Call to Bar Ceremony, thus leading to a higher national unemployment rate.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
