By Ebele Orakpo

THE National Universities  Commission (NUC) and the Council for Legal Education (CLE) has given the  American University of Nigeria full approval to start her innovative LL.B program.

The approval was given after the NUC and the CLE conducted a resource verification exercise on AUN’s state-of-the-art facilities at different times.

Admission into the LL.B program for the 2016/2017 academic session is already in progress, according to a release by the institution made available to Vanguard Learning.

“The CLE, had at a full Council meeting on Tuesday, June 28, ratified the decision of its Board of Studies to approve the School of Law at AUN.”

The School of Law is the 4th school in the 11-year-old development university – following the schools of Information Technology and Computing, Business and Entrepreneurship, and Arts and Sciences.

AUN’s President, Dr. Margee Ensign said the AUN was  pleased and proud that the CLE  approved the launch of the new School of Law. “AUN, Africa’s first development university, will bring an innovative and important dimension to legal education in Nigeria,” she noted.

“The law curriculum embraces Humanitarian Studies, Gender, Alternative dispute resolution, Environmental law, HIV and the Law, Gender and Development, Energy and Natural Resources Law, and Technology and the Law, among its novel courses that distinguish AUN’s unique approach to legal education,” noted the release.

Dean, AUN School of Law, Professor Oladejo Justus Olowu, believes that positive change will be triggered in the nation’s legal education system.

“We went abroad and acquired comparative benefits in the study and applications of law, which is what we have all brought together in birthing the potpourri of multicultural ideas. There is no university in Nigeria that has a program on the intercourse between law and bioethics or biotechnology; we discovered this from the best practices around the world,” he said, adding that AUN will produce a new generation of lawyers that will do the right thing.

“Our own law graduates are going to be alternative dispute practitioners and comprehensive attorneys: arbitrators, conciliators, mediators, and negotiators.

We are going to do things differently and innovatively. Nigerians will soon feel the impact of the first generation of lawyers to emerge from the AUN.

“You only hear lawyers speak about gender equality, but no lawyer in Nigeria went through a law program that has the gender content. The AUN law program will be the first, Olowu said.