Coalition Urges Council of Legal Education to Resist Pressure in Probe of Kalu’s Certificate

Civil Society Groups for Good Governance has called on the Council of Legal Education to resist pressure and complete the probe into the law school qualifying certificate of Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu.

The President of the group, Comrade Ogakwu Dominic made the call on Wednesday while addressing a press conference in Abuja.

Recall that there had been concerns about the timeline of Kalu’s NYSC service and his enrolment at the Nigerian Law School.

Available records indicated that on April 23, 2010, Kalu, then bearing the name Benjamin Okezie Osisiogu, declared upon admission into the Nigerian Law School that he was not and would not be engaged in any employment or NYSC service during his period of study.

However, his NYSC discharge certificate showed that his service year ran from March 9, 2010 to March 8, 2011, a timeline that coincides almost entirely with his law school enrolment period.

It was against this background that the Council at its sitting on April 17, 2026 constituted a committee to investigate the petition in a letter dated April 21, 2026, and directed Kalu to submit a written response within seven days to enable the committee carry out its assignment.

The allegations against Kalu included alleged perjury, false representation, and contradictions between his NYSC discharge certificate and his bar certificate.

In response to the Council’s query, Kalu’s solicitors, Olaniwun Ajayi LP, in a letter dated April 28, 2026, described the petition as fundamentally deficient in law.

He, therefore, urged the Council to dismiss it on three grounds: the absence of any vitiating criminal conduct, the petitioner’s reliance on an unsworn declaration, and the absence of any legal prohibition on simultaneous participation in the NYSC and Nigerian Law School programmes.

Ajayi further contended that there is no express statutory power conferred on the Council to withdraw or cancel a qualifying certificate after it has been issued, and that doing so would amount to a penal outcome requiring strict compliance with constitutional provisions under sections 36(8) and 36(12) of the 1999 Constitution.

The coalition, while acknowledging that Kalu was entitled to present legal arguments in his defence, maintained that the Council retains sufficient authority under the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc.) Act to investigate allegations of false representation in the procurement of qualifying certificates.

It expressed concern that the legal response focused on contesting the Council’s jurisdiction rather than addressing the substance of the allegations, and urged the committee not to allow technical arguments to derail a process it had already legitimately set in motion.

Dominic noted: “We have seen these antics before. When our group wrote an earlier petition on this same issue, Benjamin Kalu did not engage us with facts or documents. Instead, he used proxies to fight us.

“He sponsored faceless groups to attack our character. He deployed people to blackmail us and to accuse us of being politically sponsored. He called us names. He tried to intimidate us into silence.

“He frustrated that petition not by proving us wrong, but by throwing enough dust into the air to twist the minds of unsuspecting Nigerians till they lost interest.

“We want to say this clearly to the Council of Legal Education: Do not be intimidated. Do not succumb to his boasts and name-droppimg antics.

“The Council has a statutory mandate under the Legal Education (Consolidation, etc.) Act. Section 1 gives the Council responsibility for the legal education of persons seeking to join the legal profession.

“Section 5 sets out the conditions for issuing a qualifying certificate. If those conditions were not met — or if the certificate was obtained based on false representations — the Council has the inherent power to investigate and to take appropriate action.

“No court has said otherwise. No provision of the Act says the Council becomes powerless simply because the holder of the certificate is a powerful politician. The law is not a spider’s web that catches only flies while letting the hornets pass through.

“We are not saying Kalu is guilty. We are saying that the Council must be allowed to do its work without fear. The committee must sit. The evidence must be examined. Kalu must face the panel, and at the end, if the Council finds that there was no violation, then the matter ends. But if the Council finds that there was false representation or perjury, then it must act accordingly.”