General News of Thursday, 18 November 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-11-18
National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS)
499 students were denied admission into the Ghana School of Law
Attorney General directed GLC to admit the students
NUGS says they will push for more legal reforms despite the admission of 499 law students
The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has stated that it will not renege on its pledge to push for legal education reforms despite succeeding at getting the General Legal Council to agree for the 499 aggrieved law students to be admitted into the Ghana School of Law.
The General Secretary of NUGS, Julius Kwame Anthony, in an interview with GhanaWeb, said it will follow through with its demands to ensure that a memo it presented to parliament to amend the Legal Professions Act is passed.
“We have earlier sent a memo to parliament recommending certain amendments and thanks to God, members of the Constitutional, Legal affairs and Parliamentary affairs committee agree with us on those positions and all that is in the bill which has been presented to the Speaker for a motion to be moved for the amendment of Article 32, Legal Professions Act.
“Until that bill is passed where leading members of the Supreme Court that is the Chief Justice and I think 2 or 3 of his most senior colleagues are no longer on the General Legal Council…where legal education is decoupled from the GLC such that they are regulators just like the pharmacy council, the allied health council and all others then the fight is not over,” he said in a phone interview.
Julius Kwame Anthony further mentioned that the proposed amendment seeks to, among other things, grant various law faculties in various universities accreditation to teach the professional law course.
“We must ensure that the amendment explicitly gives the needed legal backing to the various faculties of law in the various institutions to carry out the professional course themselves. In other jurisdictions, there is no such thing as what we see here where students will finish a four year course and you will now ask them to go and do some two year professional course…no..no…no. These courses that they take over there in the school of law…evidence and all the others are courses that are taught in the first year [in other jurisdictions]. So all this can be incorporated in their four year period and we want parliament to see through to this so until we get to that level the fight is not over, it has just began,” he added
The decision by the GLC to admit the students follows a directive by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Godfred Dame, after protests by the students including a lawsuit which forced the Attorney General to issue the directive in a November 11 letter to the GLC.
The 499 law students had failed the entrance exam after a new quota system was implemented by the General Legal Council (GLC) without their knowledge. This issue is part of the many issues that came up annually concerning the Ghana School of Law.