Wonder Victor Kutor
President of the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Ghana School of Law, Wonder Victor Kutor on Tuesday, told Metro TV “Good evening Ghana program” that 65 percent of Ghanaian lawyers called to the Gambia Bar this year failed the law entrance examinations in Ghana.
The SRC President believes that the massive failure of students in Ghana is the problem and not the path to admission to The Gambia’s Bar.
“What happens is that when some are unable to enter, they go to other jurisdictions, Gambia, Rwanda, and Nigeria. Now, we know this is a Ghanaian problem and ought to be given a Ghanaian solution,” he explained.
Wonder Victor Kutor’s comments came after 2,034 LLB graduates sat for the 2020/2021 Ghana School of Law Entrance Exams and failed. Of the 2,824 students from the various law faculties across Ghana who sat for the exams, only 790 passed, representing approximately 28%. Therefore, the failure represents 72%.
But after their failure, Victor Kutor said those students applied to study in the Gambia and were called to the Gambia Bar after completion.
He attributed the mass failure to, among other things, the limited time candidates have to enable them to prepare for the entrance examination.
According to him, when law students graduate in July and sit for the exams in August, it will certainly not be enough for them to prepare adequately.
Wonder Victor Kutor, therefore, said, “failing an examination is not an indication that the students were below standard.”
“You leave school in July and sit for exams in August, and you are doing, let us say taxation or land law, and you go and meet tort and constitutional law if you haven’t revised enough, you will fail. So, we need to discuss as a nation.
When students graduate in July, you allow them to wait and apply the following year. Let us discuss this properly, students graduated in July, and they sat for exams in August. Was the preparation enough? This is not to defend the General Legal Council, but I want us to have a holistic discussion on this matter as a nation from now on”, Wonder stated.
He, therefore, called for an all-inclusive approach in dealing with the causes of the mass law school entrance examination failure in Ghana to remedy the situation.