By Wandoo Sombo
Parents of law students at Atiba University, Oyo, have appealed to the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, National Universities Commission (NUC) and Council of Legal Education (CLE) to urgently intervene in their children’s academic predicament.
Speaking at a news conference in Abuja on Wednesday, some of the parents said the school admitted their children to study law knowing it was not accredited by CLE.
The parents, who spoke through their lawyer, Mr Victor Opatola, said their children were currently experiencing psychological trauma after realising the university had been given them false hope of accrediting the law programme.
Opatola said the students’ academic future, as well as millions of naira invested by their families in tuition, accommodation and other expenses, was now at risk.
He said that some of the affected students had spent up to four years pursuing a law degree, while their parents had invested heavily in tuition, accommodation and other expenses.
He said the parents only recently became aware of the implications of the university’s inability to secure the required approval for its law programme.
“The issue is that Atiba University admitted law students over the years, running to five, six years knowing fully well that it is not accredited by CLE.
“The school also knew the implication that once you are not accredited by the council, your students cannot go to law school.
“The parents of the law students of the university have recently realised that the school’s law programme has not been accredited in spite of the continuous hope given to them by the school.
“They also got to realise the implication, which is that the years of investment in their children, the years of paying tuition fees, accommodation fees, and various other fees might likely be in jeopardy,’’ he said.
According to him, the situation has placed the students’ academic and professional futures in jeopardy, particularly following the CLE’s recent decision to impose a 10-year moratorium on the university’s law programme.
He said the moratorium meant that the university could no longer admit students into the programme, while the affected students could not validly go to the Nigerian Law School.
The lawyer, however, said that the most important thing at the moment, which was their main focus was for an amicable resolution to the matter.
“Our aim right now is to ensure that the years these students have put into academic work do not go to waste, neither the investment of their parents.
“What we are focused on now is the best interest of the students, and the best interest now is that they be distributed to accredited law faculties in other universities, this is the paramount interest now,’’ he said.
He said his team had written several letters to the NUC but for about two months their letters had been embroiled office bureaucracy.
He said that was why it became pertinent to call on the minister of education, the NUC and the CLE to act swiftly to prevent the students from losing the years they had devoted to their education.
The lawyer said the matter required an urgent solution because the students were already bearing the psychological burden of uncertainty over their academic and professional futures.
He appealed to all the relevant authorities to work with the affected stakeholders to find a lawful and practical solution that would protect the students.
“All what the parents want is for their children to be placed in other universities which are willing to accept them.
“This is so that they can finish their law programme and be able to go to law school so that those who want to practice law can do so.’’
Mr Edim Justus, another lawyer representing the parents sad it was pertinent for the NUC to be more proactive in its response time to such issues.
Justus said it was disheartening that the future of the children would be put in jeopardy due to no fault of theirs.
Mr Adetona Tajudeen, the father of a 400-level law student, said that his daughter got into the university through a scholarship from the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
Tajudeen said that as at the time of the admission, he and most other parents had no idea that there was a distinction between NUC accreditation and CLE accreditation.
“Initially when we got admission for our children in that school all we were told was that the law programme is accredited by NUC.
“By the following year, I saw one CLE list of approved institutions for law so I asked my daughter to find out if the school had CLE approval and this was when we got to know that they were still working on it.
“We kept asking questions and I even went to meet the registrar who promised that before September they will have the required accreditation because I went there in June.
“Since then, they kept promising that they will be accredited even though they knew it was not going to happen.
“They kept giving us hope and we only now realise it was false hope when even this month, CLE released another list of universities whose law programmes were accredited without Atiba University’s name.
“The worse part is that they are not even willing to the parents any explanation on the issue. If we had known earlier, we would have taken our children to other schools.
“We did not know the difference between NUC accreditation and CLE accreditation.
“Moreover, in the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) brochure, it is there that law is accredited,’’ he said.
The parents appealed to the minister of education to urgently convene the relevant regulatory bodies and stakeholders to find a lawful and humane solution to the problem.
On whether they intend to go to court, the lawyer said that the parents would eventually take that decision.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Atiba University, Oyo, is a private university established in 2017 and recognised by the National Universities Commission.
The university operates various undergraduate programmes, including Law.
NAN also reports that CLE recently imposed a 10-year moratorium on the university’s Law programme over issues relating to the programme’s facilities and approval.
The development has raised concerns over students who had already enrolled in the programme and spent years pursuing their degrees.
NAN also gathered that the university was currently shut down following protests by the students.
Edited by FunmilayoAdeyemi
Source: News Agency of Nigeria
