More than 4,000 law graduates of the National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN, have asked the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, to intervene in their exclusion from the 2025/2026 Nigerian Law School Bar Part II admission exercise, reviving a long-running dispute over the status of the university’s law degree for professional training. The Guardian reported that the petitioners said over 4,150 qualified graduates were affected and described the development as discriminatory.
The controversy is rooted in NOUN’s unusual legal and institutional history. The university was established in 1983, suspended in April 1984, and later revived under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, with the suspended 1983 Act reactivated in 2002, according to NOUN’s official history. In 2017, the Senate amended the university’s law to align it more closely with conventional universities, and President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the National Open University Amendment Act in December 2018. At the time, the Presidency said the amendment would allow NOUN to operate “as all other universities,” while the National Universities Commission said it addressed barriers that had kept NOUN graduates out of the Nigerian Law School and the NYSC scheme.
Despite that legislative change, the path to the Bar has remained uneven for many NOUN graduates. In their petition, the affected graduates argued that the 2018 amendment removed any legal uncertainty about their eligibility for vocational legal training and that their exclusion violates Section 42 of the 1999 Constitution, which guarantees freedom from discrimination. They urged the AGF to press the Council for Legal Education, CLE, and the Nigerian Law School to adopt an urgent admission plan that would absorb the backlog across the school’s seven campuses.
Their case is bolstered by a breakthrough recorded in July 2025, when 203 NOUN law graduates were called to the Nigerian Bar after completing Law School training. NOUN described the development as a major milestone that resolved long-standing obstacles for its law graduates, while some of the new lawyers said their performance helped challenge doubts about the quality of NOUN’s legal education.
Pressure has continued to build in 2026. Former President Obasanjo, who oversaw NOUN’s revival, last month urged the institution’s new leadership to restore its law programme and criticised the continued exclusion of its graduates from Law School. Vanguard also reported that the Law Graduates’ Association of Nigeria renewed calls on February 26 for the immediate admission of NOUN graduates ahead of the new Law School session.
For now, the dispute remains unresolved. What is clear is that, eight years after Buhari signed the amendment meant to normalise NOUN’s status, thousands of its law graduates are still waiting for a clearer and more consistent route to the Nigerian Bar.
