By William
Yaw Owusu
Wednesday
March 14, 2018
The National Accreditation Board (NAB) has rejected the
claim that it is ‘usurping’ the functions of the General Legal Council (GLC) -
which regulates the conduct and administration of legal education and profession
in Ghana.
Executive Secretary of the NAB, Kwame Dattey, told DAILY
GUIDE yesterday that the board rather works in collaboration with the
GLC to ensure that the standards set for legal education in the country are not
compromised.
He rebutted the claim saying, “We have not usurped
their functions.”
Last month, a heated debate ensued over quality of
legal education when about 80% of students who sat for the final examination of
the Ghana School of Law in May 2017 reportedly failed.
Following the abysmal performance, many legal
experts, including veteran legal practitioner Sam Okudzeto, shared their
opinions on a wide range of issues regarding legal education, especially the
mushrooming of law faculties across the country.
“The revered Sam Okudzeto said on Joy FM recently that the NAB has usurped
the functions of the General Legal Council. He said that all these things have
come about because NAB has usurped the functions of the General Legal Council,
but we humbly hold that cannot be true,” the NAB executive secretary reacted.
He said before a law faculty is established by any accredited
tertiary institution, the NAB works in conjunction with legal experts provided
by the GLC, to do an assessment based on which the green light is given for the
faculty to start its programmes.
“At any rate, when they are going to assess
faculties of law, we will not have all the expertise within the NAB itself so
we rely heavily on the GLC. We write to them to give us experts and they
consistently give us a list of people we should rely on,” he explained.
“Prof. Justice S.K. Date-Bah for instance, has served us so well.
Dr. Adinkra, the former Director of the Law School; Mr. George Sarpong, a
former Director of the school, most of them served on our panels.”
The GLC is a professional body. The NAB only
accredits universities and it is within the universities that faculties of law
are established and operate. It is not the NAB that passed its own laws. It was
parliament that did and parliament says we should do certain things which we
are complying with and therefore, it cannot be said that we are usurping the
powers of the council,” Mr. Dattey underscored.
He said the NAB has always enquired about professional
aspects of law training by institutions applying to run law programmes; and the
response has been generally that those students are not being trained for the
courts.
The executive secretary claimed, “Indeed, some of
the universities when they come and we ask them about professional aspects,
they will tell you we are not training them to go and practise in the courts.
Some people can become solicitors when they complete and graduate with LLB.
“And so, it cannot be that we have usurped the
functions of the GLC. We work in collaboration and in conjunction with the
council in the accreditation of these things.
“If the experts say this university has everything
it takes, they have the law volumes, the lecturers. How can NAB say
accreditation is denied because the students may not get admission into the Law
School in Makola?”
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