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The Senate on Tuesday passed a bill to establish additional law school campuses across the six geopolitical zones.
The bill was sponsored by Senator Smart Adeyemi, APC, Kogi West.
The approval followed the consideration of a report by the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, chaired by Senator Opeyemi Bamidele (APC, Ekiti).
The existing law school campuses are located in Lagos (South West), Abuja (North Central), Yola (North East), Kano (North West), Enugu (South East), and Yenegoa (South-South).
The additional campuses being approved by the Red Chamber include Kabba Law School Campus, Kogi (North Central); Maiduguri Law School Campus, Borno (North East); Argungu Law School Campus, Kebbi (North West); Okija Law School Campus, Anambra (South East); Orogun Law School Campus, Delta (South-South); Ilawe Law School Campus, Ekiti (South West), and Jos Law School Campus (North Central).
In his presentation, Senator Bamidele explained that the creation of the six law schools was a legislative intervention to address “the exponential increase in the number of law graduates from our universities and foreign ones, coupled with the backlog that existed over the years.
“Existing campuses are overstretched and the infrastructures are not enough to accommodate thousands of law students graduating from the universities.”
Bamidele, who observed that the United States of America, with a population of over 350 million people, has about 237 law school campuses, said some countries such as Canada and Australia, with far less population than Nigeria, have 24 and 38 law school campuses for a population of about 38 million and 26 million people respectively.
He explained that the provision of additional campuses in the six geopolitical zones of the federation was appropriate, since it does not tamper with the seven existing campuses established by administrative responsibilities of the Council of Legal Education.
Bamidele, therefore, advised the Federal Government to, as a matter of priority, provide adequate resources for the funding of the infrastructural needs of the law campuses across the country.
