1000 students drop out of Makerere annually over sports betting- Nawangwe

At least 1,000 students drop out of Makerere University annually after losing tuition fees to sports betting, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, the Vice Chancellor has revealed.

Prof Nawangwe made the remarks on Tuesday, while presiding over the recognition and rewarding ceremony of College of Business and Management Sciences (CoBAMS) 12 best performing graduates of 2024.

Prof Nawangwe said they conducted research after revelations that students drop out of the institution due to failure to pay tuition.

“Our investigations have shown that actually those people were dropping out not because they failed to pay fees. They got fees from their parents and wanted to invest in betting in order to get interest,” Prof Nawangwe said.

According to him, the same students hoodwink their parents and take them to the Freedom Square on graduation day yet they have never stepped in a lecture room.

“They ended up being broke and kept telling their parents stories. And parents don’t hear their names being read in the graduation booklet,” he said.

There have been several cases of students losing their tuition to sports betting companies around the university.

For instance, in May 2023, a Makerere University student was reported  missing after he allegedly kidnapped himself and cut off communication with parents, relatives and friends after losing his tuition to a sports betting scheme.

Augustine Ssekajugo, the then 2nd year student of Dental Surgery left his rented room in Makerere-Kikoni and went into hiding in Iganga District. It was not until police intensified their search and rescue operation that he was found hiding in Butama Village, Nakalama Sub County in Iganga District.

An exhaustive search that led to his arrest in Iganga established that the victim-turned suspect had rented a room where he was going to start coaching lessons.

Prof Nawangwe used the same event to discourage graduates against moving on the streets of Kampala claiming they are unemployed.

He instead advised them to move out anywhere in the world and work from there.

“The good thing is that the population in the rest of the world is going down everywhere in the world. It is only in Africa where the population is going up,” Prof Nawangwe said.

He added: “With the decrease in the population, there are many countries now where there is a big deficit of skilled workforce.”

The rewarding ceremony was a partnership between Makerere University, Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), and Prudential Uganda awarding the best graduates with cash prizes, mentorship and graduate training, scholarship for students to enroll for CPA.