Education
NSUK vows to collaborate US on Law exchange programmes for excellence
David Odama
Nasarawa state university, Keffi has vowed to robustly collaborate with the United States of America especially the university of California College of Law, San Francisco in the area of exchange programme for its under graduate and post graduate law students.
Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Sa’adatu Hassan Lima said at a one day public lectures organized by the Faculty of Law of the university that the collaboration would offer the university the opportunity of scholarships for LLM students going from keffi to California, while the collaboration will also give Students of California to do their LLM and doctorate studies in the Nasarawa state faculty of law.
According to the Vice Chancellor, the exchange of students and staff, are bound to be mutually beneficial adding that staff and students of the institution have done exceptionally well when representing the university outside the country which she said reflects the commendable character of staff and students of the institution
“The performance of our staff and students in Poland is illustrative of this facts.
“One of such examples is Muhammed Kabir who was the best student in the university of agriculture in Poland. I’m sure that staff and students of our faculty of law will do equally or maybe better in California”, the VC stated
“Nasarawa state university, Keffi is one of the fastest growing universities in Nigeria. We have thousands of students in our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes we also have dozens of international students studying here in Nasarawa state university Keffi.
“Our university have academic and non- teaching staff drawn from different parts of Nigeria and indeed different parts of the world. The diversity in student and the university motor, which is knowledge for development, all those desirous of seeking and applying knowledge for development are welcome to our university.
Our university offers more than 300 programmes across 11 faculties and more than 60 department, the cosmopolitan outlook of our university is not accident rather it is born of deliberate plan and actions to achieve the vision of the university, which is to be a world class center of excellence for the individual and the society
As a world class center of excellence the university actively promotes partnership and collaborations with national and foreign institutions. it is therefore a delight to have this public lecture which is in collaboration with the U.S embassy here in Nigeria and the faculty of law in the university and also the college of law university California and San Francisco.
“We welcome the opportunity to share knowledge and perspective with visiting scholars from California, in addition to public lectures the collaboration will also involve exchange of scholars, as we are receiving a group of scholars this week so also will a group of scholars from our university will be visiting California later this year.
“As part of our collaboration, students who finish from our undergraduate programme will be encouraged to proceed to the LLM programmes of the college of law university California.
Professor Lima noted that although, Nasarawa state university was comparatively young to the first established university in the country, the institution has become one of the best universities in Nigeria in many areas of scholarships and academic collaboration
“In this regard, we have been receiving delegations from other universities to study aspects of our programme. One of the reasons for our fast growth is our willingness to learn from others and collaborate with them”.
” I know that from today’s public lecture we will not only learn more on the administration of criminal justice in the United States, but see the Nigerian perspective. While looking forward to the presentation and the robust interactions, it my honour to declare this public lecture open”, the Vice Chancellor declared.
Also speaking at the occasion, Nasarawa state Attorney General and Commissioner for justice, Barrister Laraban Magaji disclosed that Nasarawa state have since commenced implementation of plea bargain system stating that under his watch, the state had quite a number of Cases where the defendant after being furnished with the weight of evidence against them come back and own up to the offence so that no body should suffer unnecessarily.
“Nasarawa state have since commenced implementation of plea bargain. under my watch, the state had quite a number of. Cases where the defendant after being furnished with the weight of evidence against them come back and own up to the offence so that no body should suffer unnecessarily.
” In my office as the attorney general of the state the most important tool for success is collaboration nobody knows it all, now you can see that the Dean of the faculty of law, professor Elijah Oluwayoyin Okebukola has used his contacts and his connection and the initiative God has bestowed in him attract the dean of the faculty of law, California to actually come as far as Nasarawa state university, this is truly commendable and will hope that other people will imbibe this spirit and Nasarawa state will key into the global education.
He said that the state has since develop it’s template in line with the criminal justice administration law which is drawn from “section 2170″ of the criminal administration justice act and we have now incorporated it into our own legislation and we also have a template through which all defendants will now sign the victims will sign and the attorney general will sign and the court will abduct it as a consent judgement then implement what has been contained”.
“We have a template guided by our criminal justice administration law, which is drawn from “section 2170″ of the criminal administration justice act and we have now incorporated it into our own legislation and we also have a template through which all defendants will now sign the victims will sign and the attorney general will sign and the court will abduct it as a consent judgement then implement what has been contained”.
According to the Attorney General, “it’s not about state government implementing anything here, it’s about the concept of judicial process, in actual sense the idea of plea bargain is alien to quite a number of people, the purpose of plea bargain is to reduce the number of period the trial will go on. If you observe on the average a full trial will take two to three years, but once there is plea bargain it will shorten the length of time the trail will go.”
This is exactly what the training is all about, there is what is called sentencing guidelines, if you listen from the beginning to the end of this exercise you will be able to have a general idea of what the concept is all about.
“So simply put If you plea guilty for example there suppose to be some kind of arrangement, that even though you didn’t commit the offence initially along the line you decide to own up and say that I’m ready to answer to the offence the court will now look at it and it must be with the consent of the prosecutor and the people you stole from, so you see there are quite a wide range of issues contained in plea bargaining”, Barrister Labaran Magaji explain.
He thanked the organizers for putting together the lecture as well as the guest from the California College of Law for taking interest on the exchange programme which he said will foster cordial learning relationship between the two institutions.