Longe, Uzoma
Two
students that recently graduated from the Nigerian Law School reveal
how they bagged first class degrees, even as many others recorded
failure, TEMITAYO FAMUTIMI reports
Twenty-five-year-old
Opeyemi Longe is used to blazing the trail in the academic world. For
13 years, many students had tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to bag a first
class Bachelor’s degree in the Faculty of Law of the Adekunle Ajasin
University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State.
But,
in 2012, the native of Omuooke-Ekiti broke the jinx and emerged the
first student to graduate with a first class degree from the faculty.
Not
done with this feat that has earned him accolades and admiration,
Longe, who was admitted to the Abuja campus of the Nigerian Law School
in October 2013 for the one-year mandatory vocational legal training for
aspiring lawyers in the country, pledged to keep the flag of excellence
flying.
Apart from being one of the
four students that shined at the 2014 Part II Final Bar Examination of
the NLS, Longe has also emerged as the first law graduate of the AAUA to
obtain a first class degree from the 51-year-old institution.
The
other successful students who obtained a first class degree at the NLS
this year are Ikechukwu Uzoma from the Lagos campus of the NLS who
graduated from the Abia State University, Uturu; Anita Omonuwa (Abuja
Campus), a graduate of the University of Reading, United Kingdom; and
another student from the Bayelsa campus of the school.
The
mass failure recorded at the law school this year has remained a
subject of discourse among legal luminaries and educationists. According
to the summary of the result posted on the NLS website, mynls.com, only 3,418 out of the 7,176 registered students passed the examination.
About
527 students had conditional passes, while 3,100 failed. Some of the
students were said to have abstained from the examination.
The PUNCH
sought to speak with the outstanding graduates produced this year at
the Law School on the secret of their success in the examination.
Longe,
who had eight distinctions — including four A1s — in all the subjects
that he offered at the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination
in 2005, said he set out from the beginning to graduate with a first
class degree.
Having performed the
same feat as an undergraduate of a relatively new state university, he
said, the development had placed on him a burden to defend the result at
the Law School.
Longe added that it
was imperative for him to prove that the result he obtained at the AAUA
was not a fluke and that he would have bagged the same class in any
university in the country.
He said,
“When I finished from the university, I became the first person to
graduate with a first class degree in a faculty that had existed for 13
years and this placed on me a burden to defend this result at the Law
School.
“I knew that I was expected to
prove that the first class I got was not a mere fluke and that I could
not afford to have anything less.
“Besides,
I had always believed that I could be the best student in any school I
attended. For this reason, I have been the best student in all the
schools that I have attended, starting from primary school.
“Therefore,
I saw no reason why the Nigerian Law School should be any different.
What I needed to do was to make myself realise I could do it and so it
became my drive to make a first class.”
He
noted that his attendance at social outings and programmes were very
minimal, adding that he did it on purpose with a view to achieving his
academic goals.
Describing the mass
failure as unprecedented, Longe stated that he did not employ any
special reading strategy to post an exemplary academic performance.
The
third child in a family of six, however, explained that he studied
“very hard” from the beginning of the one-year programme, adding that he
bought at least two recommended text-books for each of the five courses
offered at the NLS.
He said he never
toyed with group discussions organised by the school management, adding
that the special arrangement gave him the opportunity to learn from his
colleagues.
He said, “In each of the
five courses offered at the Law School, I have at least two textbooks
recommended by the school and I did not just purchase them for the fun
of it. I took my time to study each and every one of them and you will
be amazed what effect they had on me.
“They
gave me the privilege of having a good grasp of those courses, perhaps
far above what I was expected to know. There may actually not be a
special reading strategy, but I know I was disciplined in my studies.
“I
worked very closely with the lesson plan made available to all of us.
So I ensured that I studied for each lesson before the class and carried
out the pre-class assignments and this is where the issue of
disciplined study comes in.
“I told
myself, ‘You must not do anything else unless you are ready for
tomorrow’s class.’ In this wise, every other thing I needed to do came
after I was satisfied of being prepared for the class of the following
day.”
Although Aba-born Uzoma, who
hails from the Nkwerre Local Government Area of Imo State, graduated
from ABSU with a Bachelor’s degree in the second-class upper division,
he etched his name in gold this year as the first ABSU Law graduate to
obtain a first class degree at the law school.
The
2007 alumnus of Dority International Secondary School, Abayi, Aba, Abia
State, whose childhood dream was to be a legal practitioner, stated
that he had always nurtured the ambition of having an excellent result
to aid his “future educational and career goals.”
Going
down memory lane, Uzoma said, “My childhood dream was to study law. I
grew up saying I would be a lawyer for no particular reason. As I
approached my decision years, I realised that my dream had moulded me
into a frame that could only accommodate the studying of law.”
Noting
that there were many distractions at the Lagos campus of the Law
School, Uzoma stated that he withdrew from social functions organised by
his colleagues, adding that he mostly participated in academic and
religious activities.
“Wisdom directed
my affairs while in the law school. I withdrew from several
responsibilities I had outside school and my church, Commonwealth of
Zion Assembly, besides, I adopted a regimented sleeping schedule,
especially towards the exams. I did not join my family for the last
Christmas and Easter holidays. I used those periods to rest and study
Besides, I put in extra efforts to redeem any lost time.
“Cardinally,
I had a way of keeping my focus strong and getting very involved in the
curricular activities in school. As a group leader in the Lagos campus,
I ensured that I was personally involved in all the assignments and I
found some time to study. My constant dissatisfaction with my inability
to meet some personal targets spurred me on to stretch and do more. I
also kept a small circle of friends with whom I studied,” the
25-year-old stated.
Noting that
academic studies at the law school were quite demanding, the young
lawyer, born to a pharmacist father, explained that the challenging “new
learning environment” toughened his resolve to “succeed irrespective of
my condition.”
Stating that he
refrained from “memorising or cramming a lot,” at the law school, Uzoma
said he sought to “understand how the law works and I applied every
principle to everyday life.”
Just as
the Deputy Director-General and Head of Lagos campus of the NLS, Mrs.
Toun Adebiyi, alleged that many of the students who failed were
preoccupied with social media rather than their studies, Longe and Uzoma
said they withdrew from social networking during the academic
programme.
“Throughout my period at
the Law School, I was significantly away from the social media such that
some of my friends accused me of avoiding them, Longe said.
Uzoma also stated, “I stopped contributing to discussions online and my degree of online activity greatly reduced.”
Acknowledging
the commitment of the law school management in ensuring that students
pass the examination, Longe and Uzoma noted that not all the
unsuccessful candidates were unserious, as alleged by the authorities.
Longe
said, “Depending on the way you want to look at it, the management may
be right to an extent because some students were just too unserious to
pass. That is not to say that the majority of the student population
were unserious.
“There are students
who took pleasure in coming late to class, pinging, chatting and holding
separate discussions when lectures were going on.
“But
the sudden reduction of the time for the multiple choice questions from
one hour to 50 minutes without adequate notice affected some students
because they prepared for the exam on the assumption that they had one
hour for the exams.”
Uzoma, who noted
that the Final Bar Part II Examination had a “peculiar grading
structure,” unlike other regular professional examinations, argued that
it would be difficult to prove that the majority of his colleagues
failed because they were unserious.
“I
cannot say that the majority of my colleagues failed because they were
unserious. I do not know how that can be proved. There may have been
some unserious folks in my set but I cannot say that the majority of my
colleagues were unserious,” Uzoma stated.
The
two Law school graduates, who are waiting to be called up for the
mandatory National Youth Service Corps scheme in November, have already
received offers to join the academic staff of the Law Faculty of their
respective alma maters.
But they have
said they would love to practise law, as well as pursue postgraduate
degrees up to the doctoral level before considering to take up the
offer.
Noting that they both seek to
take advantage of available scholarship opportunities, Longe and Uzoma
indicated interest in obtaining master’s and doctoral degrees from the
University of Birmingham, UK and Harvard University, United States
respectively after undergoing the NYSC programme.
SOURCE: Punch News
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