BY DAYO BENSON and CHINYERE ABIAZIEM

Lagos- As part of efforts to expand the frontiers of legal education and upgrade its services delivery, the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies NIALS, has introduced on-line learning to its curriculum. The Institute Director-General Prof Epiphany Azinge SAN at the launching of the On-line learning in Lagos stated that NIALS has to improve on its facilities and emulate what other institutions outside the country are doing in order to remain relevant.

The event which took place at the University of Lagos Campus of the institution witnessed live demonstration of the on-line learning. According to Prof Azinge the essence of the concept is: “To upgrade and update our facilities and the techniques of teaching that will obviously stand the taste of time. We are in a modern era and like I said; the only way we can compete favourably with institutions outside this country is for us to do some of the things that is obtained outside or even better.”

Speaking further he added :”It is unfortunate that in Nigeria we dont have any university among the first 100 or even more than that 200 or 300. But the challenge is that, with little drops of water a lot can be achieved, in the past we have boasted that we have the best law library in Africa, but that seems to be in the past, and if we continue living in the past then the future will be bleak for the institute.”

“We have conceptualised the idea of broadening our horizon and then our catchment, in the sense that more often than not, only people who can find time out of their crowded schedule in the office can find time to be in the institute for continued legal education, whether it is post graduate studies or may be trying to look at some specialised courses. So we deemed it necessary that the only way we can reach to our teeming participants or would be participants wherever they maybe in Nigeria even beyond Nigeria is to devise a means whereby the idea of electronic learning or distance learning as the case may be will be introduced so that we can capture interested participants from Ghana, from Senegal and some other parts of the world,”He said.

Prof Azinge stated further that: “ Happily we were able to get in touch with people from cyberspace who are experts in their own right and who are knowledgeable enough because they have done similar thing for National Open University,and here we are with them trying to drive the process at a cost that we consider very very affordable and reasonable in this circumstance.

But with the window of opportunity to beam us to all the nook and crannies and outside this jurisdiction to people who are interested in knowing what we are doing, for us it is something that will internationalise us and open us up to the whole world, so that people can get to terms with exactly what we are doing, see our publications, see our research products, see most of our teaching curricula and of course get to know exactly what the institute is all about. “

He pointed out that: “ Most significantly is also an opportunity for people to avail themselves of some of the post graduate facilities or opportunities that are in here in the institute, especially the legislative drafting aspect of it. People can study and pursue a degree from Sokoto, Maiduguri from Enugu and so on and so forth. So we feel that this is the best thing that can happen to the institute at this point in time.

Been able to do all what we are doing to all parts of the globe more importantly to Nigerians so that people can access what we are doing and at a very very cheap rate. So we are happy that we have been able to introduce this, we believe it is the way forward, we believe it is also an opportunity for most Nigerians to also sign unto whatever is happening in the institute. I know that it will just be a matter of time before we can also make sure our virtual library is fully operational to a very large extent work is in progress by the time we are able to achieve this synergy between the library and the learning process, we will be able to open up Nigerian publications to the external world.