DG Odusote questions endless Bar attempts, warns firms against shielding absentee students and asks NBA to help rescue Law School accommodation
PORT HARCOURT — How many times should a candidate be allowed to fail the Bar Final examination before the profession begins to ask a harder question: is the problem the examination, the candidate, the training system — or all three?
That question surfaced at the Nigerian Bar Association’s 2026 Annual General Meeting in Port Harcourt, where the Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Dr Olugbemisola Titilayomi Odusote, suggested that the profession may have to reconsider the practice of allowing candidates to make repeated attempts at the Bar Final examination without an obvious endpoint.
She did not announce a new limit.
Instead, presenting the report of the Council of Legal Education, Odusote raised the possibility of establishing a maximum number of attempts for candidates who repeatedly fail, saying the issue deserved serious consideration. She referred specifically to candidates who had attempted the examination more than four times.
The proposal touches a nerve in a profession in which failure at the Bar can mean years of additional waiting, repeated fees and another cycle through an already demanding vocational training system.
But the more revealing part of the DG’s intervention was not the question of how many times a candidate should be permitted to sit the examination.
It was what she said about what happens before the examination.
The externship problem
The Nigerian Law School’s externship programme is intended to take students beyond lecture rooms and into the practical world of legal practice. Students are placed with law firms and courts so that they can observe proceedings, participate in professional routines and acquire the habits expected of practising lawyers.
Odusote told the AGM that feedback from the recently completed portfolio assessment raised concerns about the seriousness with which some placements were being handled.
Some students, she said, were not sufficiently engaged by the lawyers or firms to which they had been posted. Others returned without the required confidential reports.
Her message to practitioners was blunt: Do not treat externs as visitors who merely need somewhere to sit.
The Law School regards the placement as practical pupillage, and the responsibility for making it meaningful does not end with handing a student a letter of introduction.
There was an even sharper warning for firms that might be tempted to help students circumvent the system.
Odusote said firms should report students who failed to attend their placements instead of covering for them. A student who attended only 20 per cent of the required period, she said, should not be presented as having completed the programme.
The consequences could follow the student into the Bar examination.
Those who fail the portfolio assessment may still sit for the Bar Final examination, but their results can be withheld until they return and repeat the relevant component.
That places a significant responsibility on the profession itself.
If the Law School is preparing students for practice, but the practitioners entrusted with exposing them to practice do not provide the experience properly, the training chain breaks somewhere between the classroom and the courtroom.
The disturbing question behind repeated failures
The debate over resits deserves more than a simple argument for or against a numerical ceiling.
A failed Bar examination can mean different things.
For one candidate, it may expose inadequate preparation. For another, it may reflect financial pressures, illness, family circumstances or shortcomings in a particular area of the examination. For yet another, repeated failure may point to a deeper problem with the person’s readiness to enter professional practice.
A blanket limit could therefore produce difficult questions of fairness.
But unlimited attempts raise a different concern.
At what point does the profession have to acknowledge that repeated examination opportunities are no longer helping a candidate become a lawyer?
Odusote’s intervention appears to be aimed at that question rather than at an immediate restriction on candidates.
The Nigerian Law School’s own stated mission is to provide vocational and practical training that equips graduates to function as barristers, solicitors, advocates and advisers. Its current website describes the institution as having seven campuses and more than 6,500 students.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply producing people who can pass an examination.
It is producing lawyers who can actually practise.
Who trains the lawyer?
That distinction is becoming increasingly important as legal practice changes.
Artificial intelligence, electronic evidence, cybersecurity, digital transactions, data protection, alternative dispute resolution and increasingly specialised commercial practice are changing what clients expect from lawyers.
Odusote acknowledged the pressure for the Law School curriculum to keep pace, but made an important point: a programme lasting roughly six months cannot reasonably be expected to carry the entire burden of professional formation.
Universities have a role.
The Nigerian Law School has a role.
Practising lawyers have a role.
And the profession itself has a role.
That argument deserves attention because Nigeria’s legal education debate often moves between two convenient positions: universities blame the Law School for graduates’ shortcomings, while the Law School blames universities and practitioners.
The result can be a gap through which students fall.
A graduate may leave university with a law degree, enter the Law School and pass the Bar, yet still arrive at a law office without knowing how a client conference should be conducted, how a brief should be prepared, how a case should be managed or how professional ethics should operate when commercial pressure arrives.
Those are not merely examination questions.
They are the substance of legal practice.
And then there is the hostel problem
Odusote’s appeal to the NBA for hostel construction may initially appear to belong to a different conversation.
It does not.
The Nigerian Law School has seven campuses, but Odusote said some are already overstretched and some facilities are in poor condition. She linked part of the pressure to students’ preference for placements in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
Her proposal was direct: the NBA should consider constructing hostels at Law School campuses as part of its contribution to the profession.
“Charity begins at home,” she told lawyers, effectively challenging the Bar to invest in the institution that supplies it with its future members.
There is already a precedent for external intervention.
Odusote disclosed that the FCT Administration had assisted the Law School with land documentation and accommodation, including 10 four-bedroom bungalows, with another 10 under construction and a projected total of 32 units.
The hostel question, however, points to a wider issue.
The Nigerian Bar Association is one of the country’s largest professional associations. Its membership depends on a functioning pipeline of legal education. If that pipeline is overcrowded, poorly housed or inadequately resourced, the consequences will eventually appear in the quality of the profession itself.
The Bar has been put on notice
Odusote’s intervention at the NBA AGM was therefore about considerably more than resit examinations.
It was a reminder that the making of a lawyer is a chain, and every link matters.
The university cannot simply hand over a graduate and walk away.
The Law School cannot assume that six months of intensive vocational training can repair every weakness accumulated over years.
The practising Bar cannot accept students into externship placements merely to satisfy an administrative requirement.
And the NBA cannot complain about declining standards while treating legal education as somebody else’s responsibility.
There is a particularly important point in the DG’s warning about professional conduct. She said some practitioners undermine standards taught at the Law School, including professional dressing, ethics and other professional habits. She urged lawyers to reinforce those standards rather than discard them once students enter practice.
That is where the argument over Bar resits becomes much larger than the examination hall.
The question is not simply how many chances should a failed candidate receive?
The harder question is whether the profession is giving aspiring lawyers the right preparation, supervision and environment before asking them to prove themselves.
If the answer is no, then limiting attempts may treat the symptom without addressing the cause.
If the answer is yes, then the profession has a legitimate interest in asking how long repeated failure should continue.
The Nigerian Law School has now placed both questions before the Bar.
The NBA will have to decide what it intends to do with them.
