Uneb rejects blame for MPs’ paper woes
Kampala- Two government bodies in charge of equating the country’s academic qualifications have said they carry no blame for clearing MPs whose academic credentials court has since found to be inadequate.
Mr Daniel Odong, the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) executive secretary, said although he has not looked at the documents for the affected MPs, the board only verifies academic documents as required by the law.
“I will need to look at the document if it was cleared by us and what was relied on. But the law talks about A-Level and for us, we only look at that particular level...You only give us your index number when you sat Senior Six and we search in our database,” Mr Odong said.
He added: “The legal requirement is that you present your A-Level certificate. As Uneb, we can’t ask whether you did Primary One or Primary Seven and from where or whether you actually went to secondary.”
On Monday, the Jinja High Court kicked out Lugazi Municipality MP Isaac Mulindwa Ssozi (NRM) out of Parliament, citing lack of academic qualifications.
In her ruling, Justice Margaret Mutonyi said Mr Ssozi had failed to prove to court that he had minimum qualifications to be an MP. Dr Nabatanzi Lugudde had filed the petition.
Earlier, the Kampala High Court declared Busiro South MP seat vacant after NRM’s Peter Ssematimba was found lacking the requisite academic papers.
This followed a petition by his rival, DP’s Steven Ssekigozi who argued that Mr Sematimba had a certificate issued by the East African Examination council which cannot be equated to an A- Level certificate. The minimum requirement for one to contest for a parliamentary seat is an A-Level certificate.
However, Mr Ssematimba told court that his papers had been cleared by National Council of Higher Education (NCHE) which gave him a certificate of equivalence that he used for nomination.
The NCHE executive, Prof John Opuda-Asibo, defended their action saying he finds “nothing wrong” with Mr Ssematimba’s papers.
“I know about Ssematimba. He was cleared by NCHE. At least that is our submission. I don’t know whether anything has gone wrong with his papers. I am still waiting to read the judgment. Until we receive it, I don’t want to comment,” Prof Opuda said in an interview.
NRM electoral commission chairman, Mr Tanga Odoi, said as a party, they don’t have a mandate to verify academic documents but they relied on the submissions from Uneb and NCHE to endorse their candidates.
