The Ghana National Association of law students says it is yet to receive a response from the presidency a month after presenting a petition on the state of legal education in Ghana to the government.
Some aggrieved law students embarked on a demonstration in October 2019 to demand reforms in Ghana’s legal educational system.
The demonstration was marred when the students and sympathizers were prevented from presenting their petition to government at the Jubilee House.
Leaders of the group were at a later date allowed to present the petition.
Speaking to Citi News, a convenor of the Ghana National Association of Law Students, Regina Amegah said weeks after presenting their petition, they are yet to get feedback.
“We haven’t had any response from the Presidency, we have been following up with Abu Jinapor and those we met but we are yet to get anything substantive from them. However, the parliamentary committee on constitutional and legal affairs, invited us over for a meeting and we have been in talks with the clerk to the committee and she said they are preparing the report and will get back to us. It really saddens us and most of our members are unhappy about the turn of events looking at the fact that the President is a renowned human rights lawyer, we felt he would have taken more interest in how this would have panned out”.
“One month after the presentation of the report and we still don’t have anything coming from the Presidency shows to most of our members and most law students that the President may not be concerned with the issue of legal education”.
A few months ago, the Ghana School of Law recorded another case of mass entrance examination failure only months after a similar one was witnessed which saw more than half of the candidates for the bar exams failing.
This time around, the mass failure was recorded at the entrance exams.
This year, out of the about 1,800 students who sat for the entrance exams, only 128 of them passed.
Pressure was mounted on the General Legal Council, following the mass failure with many calling for drastic reforms.
However the Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo had said the existing systems and structures for the training of lawyers in the country will not be changed despite public outcry.
She stressed that the current system that many deem as strict and unfair is meant to ensure that lawyers who are trained in the country are of global standards.