Kwara State University, Malete has sent out an appeal to the Council of Legal Education (CLE) asking it to reconsider the one-year ban on admission of law students imposed on the University.
The school in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Council of Legal Education pointed out that when its attention was drawn to the violation of the CLE accreditation regulations in 2020, it ceased from admitting students into its Law programme for two academic sessions.
In the letter of appeal signed by its Registrar, Dr. Kikelomo W. Sallee, the university further explained that its pause on law students’ admission accounted for there being no students’ graduation from the Faculty of Law at the end of 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 academic sessions.
The letter sighted by Law & Society Magazine reads:
On behalf of the Governing Council, the Vice Chancellor and the entire management of the Kwara State University, Malete, I express our profound gratitude to the Council of Legal Education (CLE) under your chairmanship, for the kind reprieve for our law graduates who are currently undergoing their mandatory vocational training in the Nigerian Law School.
However, our attention has been drawn to a social media report that the CLE decided at its last meeting to suspend our University from admitting students into its law programme as a result of our commencement of the Law programme before the CLE accreditation. I wish to state that Kwara State University, Malete has zero tolerance for violation of laws or regulations. Hence, the University unilaterally suspended admission of students into its law programmes the moment its attention was drawn to the inadvertent violation of the CLE accreditation regulations in 2020.
Consequently, the University did not admit students into its Law programme for two academic sessions until the Faculty of Law passed the CLE resource visit in 2021 and was cleared to commence the programme. This accounted for why the University did not graduate any student from the Faculty of Law at the end of 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 academic sessions. Our law graduates who are currently in the Law School are the 2019/2020, 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 sets.
In view of the foregoing, we sincerely appeal to the CLE under your leadership to reconsider its position and waive the one-year ban on admission imposed on our University having established our remorsefulness by suspending the law admission process suo motu for two academic sessions even without the Council’s directive to that effect.
