OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) AS A PANACEA FOR UNINTERRUPTED LEGAL EDUCATION IN PRE AND POST COVID-19 PANDEMIC NIGERIA

Abstract

The World Bank stated that by April 2020, over 220 million, or 13 percent, of students in tertiary education globally experienced interruptions in their studies due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, over 30,000 Nigerian law students faced academic disruptions for the same reason. Invariably, the momentum for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has never been stronger than since the COVID-19 pandemic, which urgently demands a paradigm shift in lifestyles and the transformation of education through relevant learning models, pedagogies, and institutional management reforms. Meanwhile, the Council of Legal Education (CLE) in Nigeria, which regulates the admission of law students, approves only the conventional face-to-face teaching method, which creates inequalities and lacks inclusiveness. This is inimical to the attainment of ESD for law education in Nigeria, where universities were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a doctrinal research methodology, the paper finds that the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) model espoused by the National Open University of Nigeria is a substantial panacea to academic interruptions attributable to present and future pandemics. However, the critical issue is getting the CLE and law faculties to adopt this emerging ODL paradigm for sustainable law education in Nigeria. The paper therefore makes salient recommendations to that effect.