UNIUYO Law students kneel to write exams in ill-equipped lecture hall

It was a troubling sight at the permanent site of the Faculty of Law, University of Uyo.

On Tuesday afternoon, students of the Faculty of Law, cramped in a classroom furnished not with desks, struggled to write the semester’s examination.

Some could not sit upright and had resorted to kneeling—hunched over, struggling to write a three-hour examination in discomfort and indignity.

This is not a crisis triggered by natural disaster. It is the consequence of a deeply flawed system—one that has turned a multi-million-naira project into a national embarrassment.

The Faculty of Law was relocated to its new site in October 2024. But nearly a year later, the classrooms are still without desks or writing boards.

Lecturers’ offices remain bare, the promised library is nonexistent, and the building itself—though financed by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND)—remains uncompleted and poorly finished.

“The finishing of the building itself is questionable, as it appears to be without form to qualify for a law faculty in comparison to what we see in other schools,” said an inside source.

According to official records, TETFUND released the funds for the construction of the University of Uyo Faculty of Law in December 2015.

That same month, funds were also released for the Faculty of Law at the University of Port Harcourt.

Yet by 2021, Port Harcourt completed and inaugurated an ultra-modern, fully furnished law complex—despite having a newer faculty and fewer students.

What the University of Uyo has instead is a substandard structure, lacking in basic educational facilities.

“There are no standard classrooms and lecture theatres here,” another observer noted. “Everything in this place is substandard. No one will believe this was built with the future in mind.”

There is growing concern over the alleged mismanagement of funds and the role played by senior figures in the university, including a prominent Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) said to have supervised the architectural concept of the building.

“He should be setting standards, not lowering them,” the observer added.

Students, meanwhile, have been left to suffer in silence. Many say they are afraid to speak out, citing the heavy-handed response of university management to student protests.

A culture of intimidation has silenced their voices, even as their academic performance continues to deteriorate in such appalling learning conditions.

“The students themselves are part of the problem,” the source noted, “because they have been timid and prepared to take the nonsense that has been handed down to them.”

As images of kneeling law students begin to circulate, a reckoning is underway—not just for those who mismanaged the funds, but for an institution that has failed its brightest minds.

In a faculty meant to produce the custodians of justice, today’s events are more than symbolic—they are a damning indictment of neglect, greed, and silence.

If the law is truly meant to protect the voiceless, then the Faculty of Law, University of Uyo must first reckon with the fact that it has failed its own.

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