National Council of Higher Education (NCHE) officials were Thursday tasked by members of the 10th Parliament sitting on the Committee of Education and Sports, to explain how they cleared some legislators without genuine academic documents for the last elections.
The council which interfaced with the committee chaired by Mbale Women MP, Connie Nakayenzi was accused of conniving with politicians to issue fake academic papers.
The meeting follows the ongoing ongoing court petitions where over 20 MPs have been pushed out of Parliament over suspicious academic papers.
NCHE and other officials from education institutions were led to the committee by state minister of Primary Education, Rosemary Sseninde.
“It is a shame that several MPs have been disqualified by courts of law because of the very academic papers that you verified and certified,” noted Koboko District Women MP, Margaret Babadiri.
Joseph Ssewungu, the Kalungu West MP kept NCHE executive director Prof. Opuda Asibo unsettled all afternoon, stressing that the institute is usurping powers of verifying academic papers, an exercise that should be carried out by Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB).
According to the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act 2001 (UOTIA), NCHE is mandated to monitor and evaluate High Education Institutions.
“The way NCHE operates is really incongruous. Do you know that someone can go there to verify their papers in the morning and by afternoon their documents have been certified? I think NCHE is bypassing some institutions that are supposed to do this work and are now doing it themselves,” Ssewungu said.
In their defense, NHCE officials led by Prof. Opuda noted, “It’s not true that all MPs who have been kicked out of Parliament on academic grounds all passed through NCHE for verification, because through the law, these members claim having A level certificate and therefore don’t have to come to NCHE for any verification.”
“To put the record right, last year, NCHE had about 42 applicants for both parliamentary and local council positions and out of that less than 10 qualified to come to Parliament among 420; it’s not right that all candidates passed through NCHE, it’s only less than 5 percent.”