Law students have been urged to become revolutionaries conquering themselves, identify problems and participate in the struggle to change their society and humanity without expecting anything in return.
Prof. P.L.O. Lumumba further urged the students to make good use of their time as students to become the much needed agents of change and warriors of democracy utilizing the intellectual fire power while their time at University still holds.
This was during the Virtual launch of the Golden Jubilee Celebration of Makerere Law Society, held on Tuesday 10th August 2021.
The Guest speaker Prof. Lumumba, a Lawyer and Teacher from Kenya further expressed confidence that Makerere University School of Law was providing a good incubation opportunity for the students to enable them become good Lawyers that would be agents of change in many respects in the area of Agriculture, Politics and Law, not only in Uganda but able to dissolve the boundaries all over Africa.
In reference to the Theme of the event, ‘The Role of the Student in Contemporary Democracy”, Prof. Lumumba who described democracy as a political environment in which the people’s will is expressed, noted that the scholarly definitions of the term Democracy were euro centered and urged the law students and scholars to reconfigure the DNA of such foundational terms handed over to them in class in order to fit into the African context.
Using the example of the electoral processes as one of the tenets of democracy, he observed that the African continent had become a victim as seen from the heavy security deployments during the election period in a number of states, which he said calls into question the meaning of democracy.
Prof. Lumumba urged the Law students to establish the reasons as to why Lawyers were called ‘Learned Friends’, a history preserved for three professions including Doctors and Theologians. ‘Law is a qualification which requires extensive training, a profession in the world that claims to have mastered knowledge whose decisions bind all other professionals’, he explained.
On their role in society, he said Lawyers who were warriors of truth and justice needed to conduct themselves with dignity for the good of society.’ A Lawyer is an important agent and plays a critical role in society’ he said urging the students to be ethical, true to justice, humble and to recognize that they were not a monopoly of knowledge.
He observed that despite the fact that Law was an honorable profession, many a times, lawyers were perceived as parasitic rather than agents of social engineering in society. He urged the Law students to establish whether they were parasitic and whether the communities got better or poorer because of them.
The Guest Speaker congratulated the Makerere University community, the MLS and all stakeholders for the 50 years of existence and the monumental contribution the association and the alumni in Uganda and beyond.