The long-running dispute over the admission of law graduates of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) into the Nigerian Law School has returned to the National Assembly, with the House of Representatives beginning fresh efforts to resolve a disagreement that has left thousands of graduates unable to proceed to professional legal training.
More than 5,000 affected graduates, under the aegis of the Backlog of Law Graduates of the National Open University of Nigeria, have petitioned the House, arguing that they have completed their Bachelor of Laws programmes but remain unable to enter the Nigerian Law School for Bar training and examinations.
The dispute, however, predates the current petition by more than a decade. It became particularly contentious in 2015 when the Council of Legal Education (CLE), the body responsible for regulating legal education and professional Bar training, publicly rejected the recognition of NOUN’s LLB programme for the purpose of admitting its graduates into the Nigerian Law School.
At the time, the CLE maintained that the study of law for entry into the legal profession had to be undertaken on a full-time basis in recognised institutions and that distance-learning and correspondence law programmes were not acceptable routes to the profession. Contemporary reports also show that the controversy had already triggered legal action by NOUN law students and graduates, who challenged the exclusion before the courts.
NOUN’s own account of the matter, submitted to the House committee this year, gives a different sequence to what happened afterwards. The university said a National Universities Commission (NUC) accreditation team visited the institution in 2015 to assess its LLB programme. While it was awaiting the outcome of that process, the CLE published its position rejecting the admission of NOUN law graduates into the Nigerian Law School.
NOUN said it subsequently suspended fresh admissions into the LLB programme in 2015 and had not admitted new students since then. According to the university, the decision was intended to prevent the number of graduates caught up in the regulatory dispute from continuing to increase.
The suspension did not, however, resolve the problem for students who had already entered the programme. Between 2015 and 2019, NOUN said it held discussions with the CLE and other stakeholders in an effort to secure a route for its graduates into professional legal training.
In 2019, the university formally appealed to the CLE and submitted the names of 1,883 law graduates for consideration for admission into the Nigerian Law School. NOUN later discovered that 90 graduates had inadvertently been left out, bringing the number represented at that stage to 1,973.
The dispute then produced a temporary pathway rather than a full resolution.
According to NOUN, the Body of Benchers considered the matter in 2020 and approved a Special Remedial Programme for its law graduates instead of placing them directly on the Bar Part II route followed by graduates of other Nigerian universities.
The special programme subsequently became the route through which an initial group of NOUN graduates could continue their professional training. Reports in 2023 said graduates who successfully completed the remedial programme were being considered for admission into Bar Part II. The arrangement followed years of resistance to the recognition of the university’s law degree for professional training.
But the arrangement did not settle the position of later NOUN graduates.
On May 13, 2022, the university submitted another batch of 2,226 law graduates who had completed their studies between 2019 and May 2022 for consideration for admission into the Nigerian Law School.
That submission became another point of disagreement between the university and the CLE.
NOUN said the CLE rejected the subsequent list on grounds that included an alleged understanding that the 2019 submission represented the total number of NOUN law graduates and an allegation that the university had continued admitting students into the LLB programme after the 2015 suspension.
NOUN has rejected the latter allegation, insisting that it did not resume fresh admissions after 2015. The university’s position is that the graduates contained in the 2022 submission had been admitted before the suspension but completed their programmes at different times.
That distinction is at the heart of the present impasse: while NOUN says the post-2015 graduates were part of an earlier student population that was already lawfully admitted, the regulatory objection surrounding the programme has continued to affect their progression into professional training.
The consequences have accumulated over the years. In July 2026, NOUN law graduates renewed their campaign for admission into the Nigerian Law School, protesting at the National Assembly and later at the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation.
The graduates said more than 4,000 people had been left outside the professional training system since 2020, arguing that completing an LLB without a pathway to the Nigerian Law School had effectively left them unable to complete the process required to qualify for Call to Bar.
The renewed campaign eventually reached the House of Representatives formally. The petition was laid before the House on July 21 by the Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Publicity, Akin Rotimi, who pledged support for efforts to secure a fair and lasting resolution.
The latest stage began when the House Committee on Public Petitions took up the matter and invited NOUN and the Nigerian Law School to explain their positions and the circumstances surrounding the prolonged exclusion of the graduates.
At the committee’s investigative hearing on September 16, however, neither institution appeared physically.
NOUN submitted a letter explaining that its Vice-Chancellor was away on an official assignment, while the Nigerian Law School, through its Director-General, Dr Olugbemisola Odusote, also communicated its inability to attend because of an official engagement involving relevant officials. The Law School requested another date and assured the committee of its willingness to cooperate with the investigation.
The absence of the two institutions did not end the proceedings. The committee has directed the parties to complete their outstanding filings and scheduled a further hearing for September 30, according to reports from the committee’s proceedings.
Representatives of the affected graduates told the lawmakers that they should not be made to bear the consequences of disagreements between government institutions.
The association’s Public Relations Officer, Chibueze Obochi, argued that the graduates were not parties to whatever disagreements existed between NOUN, the CLE and the Nigerian Law School.
“We should not be made victims of inter-agency rivalries,” he said, arguing that the affected graduates were Nigerian citizens who had completed their university programmes and should be given a clear route into professional training.
Obochi also challenged the interpretation of the 1,883 names submitted in 2019. He argued that the university’s description of the list as graduates produced “so far” did not mean that it represented every graduate the university would eventually produce from students already admitted before the suspension.
The graduates have also maintained that the 2015 decision to stop fresh admissions should not be interpreted as cancelling the academic progression of students who had already been admitted.
Their position is that a student admitted before the suspension could legitimately remain in the programme and complete the requirements for graduation after 2015.
For the House, the immediate task is now to reconcile these competing accounts and establish precisely what was agreed by the institutions, what happened to the graduates who completed their studies after 2015, and what legal or regulatory pathway remains available to them.
The case also exposes a wider problem in the transition between university education and professional qualification. For the affected graduates, obtaining an LLB has not translated into access to the professional training required to enter legal practice.
NOUN’s historical records show that the university itself had identified securing CLE approval for the admission of its law graduates into the Nigerian Law School as a major outstanding issue. Its 2011–2015 institutional report specifically recommended that the university intensify efforts to obtain the approval.
More than a decade after the regulatory dispute became public, the central question remains unresolved: whether and under what conditions NOUN graduates who were admitted before the 2015 suspension, completed their LLB programmes and obtained their degrees can proceed to the Nigerian Law School.
The House intervention has now created another opportunity for the parties to put their records and positions before a legislative panel.
Until that process is concluded, thousands of graduates remain caught between a university that says it stopped fresh admissions in 2015 and a regulatory system that has yet to provide a definitive route for the later batches of graduates to complete their professional legal training.
