The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Afam Osigwe, SAN, has raised alarm over what he described as a deepening crisis in Nigeria’s legal education system, attributing it to universities’ disregard for admission quotas.
In a media briefing on Sunday, Osigwe said many law faculties were enrolling students far beyond the limits approved by the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Council of Legal Education. This, he explained, had caused a surge of law graduates seeking entry into the Nigerian Law School, overwhelming its infrastructure and academic staff.
“Several universities are running law programmes without respecting the quota system. The consequence is a backlog of graduates, and the Law School is struggling to absorb them,” he stated.
He noted that the persistent overflow had led to a yearly spike in the number of lawyers being called to the Bar, placing unsustainable pressure on the legal training system. Osigwe, however, advised against denying qualified graduates admission to the Law School. Instead, he called for reforms to align university admissions with the Law School’s limited capacity.
Addressing concerns about invitation restrictions at the Call to Bar ceremonies, the NBA president explained that the one-guest-per-graduate policy was introduced by the Body of Benchers to manage space and ensure safety, given the sharp increase in the number of candidates.
He cited recent figures to illustrate the strain: 5,728 graduates were called to the Bar during the July ceremony held over three days, while an additional 4,429 joined between September 23 and 25. Allowing two guests per graduate, he said, as practiced in previous years, would have exceeded available capacity.
Osigwe acknowledged that many families found the restriction inconvenient but insisted that safety considerations must take precedence. “The hall can only take a limited number of people, and safety remains our foremost concern,” he said.
The Call to Bar ceremony, conducted by the Body of Benchers, is the statutory process through which graduates of the Nigerian Law School are formally admitted as legal practitioners in Nigeria.
