General Secretary of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), Julius Kwame Anthony, has expressed that it is a lame excuse to state that 499 law students will not be admitted because of lack of space.
He believes that the issue of space is not a factor for rejecting these 499 students. Rather, it is just an abuse of power given to the council by the law, where the council uses its discretion to determine who passes and who does not.
Supporting his point of why the issue of space is invalid, he told Samuel Eshun on e.TV Ghana’s ‘Fact Sheet’ show: “The Ghana Legal Council (GLC) has been very inconsistent when it comes to the issue of space and its reasons for reducing the number of people and I feel that it is only an abuse of section 13(1) e and f of the Legal Professions’ act which gives them that discretion to determine who passes or not. In 2019 for instance, they admitted 128 people, with the same space. In 2020 they admitted 1,095 people into the Ghana School of Law and in 2021 they are admitting 790. How do you reconcile that it is space that is the issue?”
In his opinion, this sort of selectivity in admitting students is to ensure that those already in the practice “have more clients per lawyer.”
The 499 candidates who sat for the 2021 examinations were failed after a new quota system was introduced by the GLC.
The new quota requires candidates to pass 50% in each of the A and B sections in the exam.
The affected candidates have since been agitating and calling on the GLC to give admission to all 499 students who attained the 50 percent pass mark.
Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said that there is no space to admit the 499 Law school students who were denied admission despite attaining the 50 percent threshold in the Ghana Legal Council (GLC) examinations.
The President was of the view that despite this persistent problem, we need to find a lasting solution to the problem as more lawyers are needed to ensure that the rule of law is maintained for the country’s development.
He added that he is positive that by next year, a solution to the problem would have been realized.