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The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission has convened a follow-up curriculum development workshop in Kano as part of efforts to introduce anti-corruption education into Nigeria’s legal training system.

The workshop is aimed at producing a draft anti-corruption curriculum for possible adoption by the Nigerian Law School.

Declaring the workshop open, former Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Professor Isa Hayatu Chiroma, SAN, said the initiative was an important step in strengthening the role of the education sector in the fight against corruption.

He said future lawyers must be exposed early to the values of integrity, accountability and public responsibility, noting that corruption should not only be treated as a legal offence but also as a civic and moral challenge.

According to him, an earlier workshop held in Abuja had identified two possible approaches. One option is to introduce anti-corruption studies as a stand-alone course. The second is to integrate anti-corruption themes into existing Law School modules.

“The objective is to draft a curriculum that will be adopted by the Nigerian Law School,” Professor Chiroma said.

He assured participants that the curriculum development process would be rigorous and transparent, adding that a committee of experts would review the final document to ensure that it meets required standards.

The workshop brought together legal educators, curriculum experts and institutional stakeholders to work on a framework for embedding anti-corruption values into legal education.

In his paper titled “Law Educators, Curriculum Development and Review: Emerging Challenges and the Way Forward,” Professor Garba Saad of Bayero University, Kano, described curriculum development as a continuous process that must respond to changing realities in society.

He said corruption remains one of the major challenges confronting Nigeria and argued that legal education must equip future lawyers with the knowledge, skills and ethical grounding required to confront it.

Professor Saad said anti-corruption education could be taught as a dedicated course or infused into existing courses such as Criminal Law and Law of Evidence.

Also speaking, Deputy Director and Head of the Open and Distance Learning Division of the National Universities Commission, Dr. Nte Bisong, said the Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards framework provides an opportunity to integrate anti-corruption principles into Law programmes.

He explained that the CCMAS framework is designed to produce graduates with strong intellectual ability, ethical values, employability skills and practical competence.

Dr. Bisong also noted that the 70:30 curriculum-sharing formula allows the NUC to develop 70 per cent of programme content while universities develop the remaining 30 per cent based on their institutional strengths.

Participants agreed that the Kano workshop should produce a substantive draft curriculum for review and possible adoption by the Nigerian Law School.

They also resolved that a dedicated committee should be set up to refine the draft, while further stakeholder engagements would be held to build consensus around the initiative.

The Kano workshop is the second in a series of engagements being coordinated by the ICPC. The earlier Abuja workshop laid the conceptual foundation, while the Kano meeting focused on content development and wider stakeholder alignment.

The Commission said sustainable anti-corruption outcomes require more than enforcement, stressing that long-term change must also begin with the training of lawyers who will serve as officers of the court and custodians of justice.

— Newspot Nigeria

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