Tears as Court rules
Disgruntled students at Kyambogo University will have to swallow a bitter pill after the High Court in Kampala threw out a petition they filed to block a graduation ceremony set for next week.
On Tuesday this week, over 200 students ran to the High Court after their names failed to appear on the final graduation list slated for September 21-23, 2021.
The enraged students explained that despite having fulfilled all the necessary requirements, the University went ahead to discriminatively select a few students to graduate.
Tears as Court rules
In their petition, the students demanded that the graduation process be halted and either a satisfactory reason for omitting their names is given or the University is compelled to include them in the graduation.
They also demanded to be paid special damages for the mental torture and embarrassment caused to them.
However, their plea hit a dead-end in court today after Principal Judge Dr. Flavia Zeiji upheld the University’s graduation for next week.
The Judge says there was no supporting evidence to the case in form of the affidavits of the 45 students attached to support the case, and it was not drafted before the commissioner of courts.
Kyambogo University was present in court and represented by its counsel Baguma Cyrus.
Following the ruling, a section of distressed students started crying and cursing the University for ruining their future.
Represented by lawyer Ronald Bwire the students rejected the court’s ruling and have pitched camp at the High Court.
Their lawyer Bwire says they will stay around the court until an alternative application in their custody is filed again.
The fuming students today carried placards and held a brief protest outside the court demanding justice into their matter.
Brief Background
The matter started with an incident in which former staff members at the university reportedly deleted the results of over 29,000 students from the University’s database.
The staff who were working as information technology officers in the Directorate of Information Computer and Technology resigned under unclear circumstances.
The suspects Shamuni Zziwa, Philemon Wengari, Hudson Kisutu, and Joshua are also accused of reportedly tampering with the University servers, library system, and email.
They say students’ data hardly reflects in the Students’ Portal including their cumulative assessment or track of their academic records.
According to the public relations officer Ayebare Twinomujjune, the data was lost during the transfer of results to a new examination portal.
“We were shifting data from a precious examination portal we had no mandate over because other people were in charge of all the data, over to a new one that is ours. So in the process of transfer we experienced some technical difficulties, the 8,000 students supposed to graduate are not on the portal. But we have since resolved the problem, only that there is a bit of delay, but all the students will graduate.” he said.
By Rashidah Naakayi
