Gloria Akuffo
The Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Justice, Gloria Akuffo, has agreed to calls for investigation into the reported mass failure of students of the Ghana School Law.
“Let us investigate what is the real cause of this large numbers. Is it because lecturers are not good enough? Is it because they do not have good materials? Is it because the students themselves are not applying themselves efficiently and begin to find solutions to these?” the AG wondered.
She was speaking in an interview with Metro TV’s ‘Good Evening Ghana’ host, Paul Adom Otchere, on Thursday in Accra.
The AG’s remarks came in the wake of a 30-day ultimatum issued to the Independent Examination Board (IEB) by the Student Representative Council (SRC) of the school to re-mark the scripts of students who failed the examination.
It is reported that only 91 out of the 474 students who wrote the Bar examination in May and September 2017 passed, representing an 80 percent failure.
The students have since been protesting the results and at a press conference held recently, they threatened to petition the Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo.
The failure comes at a time when lawmakers in parliament are debating a Legal Instrument (LI) brought before the house by the General Legal Council (GLC) – the body that oversees the legal profession and legal education in Ghana.
Parliament Tasked
The backing of the AG for an investigation came just a day after lawyer Kwaku Asare had called on parliament to probe the unprecedented failure.
Mr Asare had also asked the house to summon the Director of the Ghana School of Law to explain why the school authorities “unlawfully denied access to about 3,000 students, who under the laws of Ghana, are qualified to have professional legal education.”
He further called for the setting up of a committee of legal examiners by parliament to “review the examination, the marking scheme and the exam scripts to find out what has gone terribly wrong with these examinations.”
Already, a National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Asawase, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, had questioned the authenticity of the examination results, suggesting that it could have been a deliberate ploy to make law a profession for a ‘privileged’ few.
By Melvin Tarlue