KAMPALA – A committee tasked to investigate the award of degrees at Kampala University by the National Council of Higher Education (NCHE) has recommended the withdrawal of a degree awarded last year to a Kenyan politician.
Ali Hassan Joho, who is at centre of the saga, is the governor of the coastal town of Mombasa and a member of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) in Kenya.
The committee said their findings showed that the degree awarded last year to the Kenyan politician falls short on NCHE’s parameter of awarding degrees in Uganda.
NCHE also ordered an investigation of degrees awarded to students that graduated at Kampala University with the Bachelor’s degree in Business administration last year.
The committee noted that evidence from documents obtained from sources like immigration office, Kenyan Police and CIID raised a lot of questions to which they came to the conclusion that the politician’s degree was fake.
The committee which started its work on April 1 faulted the University for failing to submit a number of documents it requested from them in order to do the verification of the politician’s degree.
These included Joho’s admission letter, copies of qualifications that merited Joho’s admission, the 2013 graduation handbook among a number of documents.
Documents retrieved from Kenya High Court showed that Joho offered 42 course units while another document handed over to CIID indicated that he offered 45 course units.
Another inconsistence in the documents showed that the politician got a GPA of 4.19 yet another documents indicated that he obtained a GPA of 4.15.
“The Committee therefore recommends to the Accreditation and Quality Assurance committee of national Council of Higher Education not to recognize the Bachelor of Business Administration (Human Resource Management option) degree awarded to Hassan Ali Joho by Kampala University and that the qualification be withdrawn by Kampala University,” said the report.
Asked about the development, Kampala University Academic Registrar, Hamuza Ssegawa, said they had not received the report. However, he maintained the degree was genuine and Joho was their former student.
“He was our student and did his degree through in service programme,” he said.
The report comes barely months after another report released by Police in Uganda also raised more questions about the authenticity of the politician’s degree.
The report released by the Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Directorate (CIID) in February whose findings are now before Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) had reported that there were discrepancies in the politician’s degree.
Consequently, CIID boss Akullo ordered NCHE to analyze the assembled evidence by CIID to enable it form an opinion on whether Joho passed through due process for him to have been issued the Bachelor of business administration by Kampala University or not.
