The Bayelsa State Government has urged faculties of law across the country to place high standards in the training of law students to produce competent lawyers that would safeguard the legal system in Nigeria.

The Deputy Governor, Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, stated this when the acting dean and other principal staff of the Faculty of Law, Federal University, Otuoke, paid him a courtesy visit in Yenagoa on Wednesday.

He said the once noble and respected legal profession was fast losing honour and pride of place due to unethical conduct brazenly exhibited by some members of the bar and bench.

Mr Ewhrudjakpo stressed the need for drastic measures to address the deficiency in ethics among most young law graduates and some practising lawyers.

He urged the various faculties of law and the law schools to insist on quality, and not quantity, of people acquiring legal education to save the nation’s judiciary from ignominy and embarrassment.

His words: “We have always had problems with the grooming of lawyers, and that is a very big issue. So, you must set the standard because if you do not set the standard now, you cannot set the standard in the future. We really need to take the issue of training and retraining of our law students very seriously. Some of them may be good at learning, but most of them are poor in character.

“So we must do something about that to save the judiciary from further embarrassment in this country. Our output from the Law School, which are the dividends from the various law faculties, does not reflect proper ethical practice. So we need to instil proper training from the beginning.’’

He congratulated the Acting Dean, Michael Akatugba, on his appointment and commended the Federal University of Otuoke for establishing the Faculty of Law to promote legal education in the country.

Addressing their requests, Mr Ewhrudjakpo assured them of the government’s readiness to identify with the university to enable the institution to achieve its goals, especially in research and scholarship.

According to him, although the institution is owned by the federal government, Bayelsa had never shied away from playing supportive roles since its establishment in 2013.

The deputy governor said that several foundation structures of the university were built by the then former governor Seriake Dickson’s administration.

Earlier, Mr Akatugba urged the state government to intervene in the rehabilitation of dilapidated facilities in the faculty, such as the water supply and leaking roofs.

He noted that about 80 per cent of the entire student population of the university were indigenes of Bayelsa.

He also requested the state government to help in the provision of solar energy for the e-library. 

(NAN)