By Mulengera Reporter
Academic staff at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) are up in arms against Vice Chancellor Prof Celestino Obua and Academic Registrar Martha Kyoshaba Twinamasiko over irregular admission of Edith Wakida to a PhD programme they say doesn’t exist at the institution.
Rumoured to be VC Obua’s girlfriend, Wakida was admitted to MUST for a PhD in Implementation Science in the Department of Psychiatry at Faculty of Medicine under registration number 2017/PhD/005/PS after she failed to secure admission for the same course at Makerere University since it is restricted to students with a background in sciences.
In their petition to the MUST Appointments Board, lecturers under their association, Mbarara University of Science And Technology Academic Staff Association (MUSTASA), claim that Wakida’s admission raises integrity questions and is bad for the institution’s image since she lacks qualifications for the programme because her background is in Fine Art and Development Studies.
Led by MUSTASA Chairman Dr Simon Kawuma and General Secretary Eng Julius Taremwa, the lecturers further allege that Wakida, who manages research grants, for some of which Obua is the principal investigator, was further “fraudulently granted” a SIDA PhD scholarship after she lied that she was a lecturer yet she was not.
They also accuse Obua of abusing his office to “influence Wakida’s admission and transfer of scholarship to MUST by providing false information to Professor Buyinza Mukadasi, the Director andSIDA programme coordinator at Makerere University, and continuously defending Ms Wakida’s PhD studies calling it a PhD of MUST and sometimes Implementation Science well knowing that there is no curriculum and accreditation for such a thing at MUST.”
The academic staff also claim that Wakida was issued two admission letters to help her fit her three-year PhD into two calendar years, especially after the Academic Registrar reportedly helped Wakida register manually for her third year yet she was supposed to be in second year at the time. This, the dons further claim, was intended to fasttrack her thesis to ensure that she graduates ahead of schedule.
Although they have raised these issues to Senate and the Dr Warren Namara Council, and the Directorate of Research and Graduate Training (DRGT) of MUST called for disciplinary action, the university’s top organs have ignored such calls since Obua and Twinamasiko are members of these key decision making structures.
The lecturers now want the Appointments Board to“cause the suspension of the renewal of Mrs Martha Kyoshaba Twinamasiko’s contract [which is expected to expire next month] until the investigation of the issues raised is successfully concluded,” go ahead and “recommend to the University Senate to urgently consider this issue of academic fraud and to provide the response needed by NCHE in the investigation of this case;” as well as “disciplinary action on officers implicated in this case to protect the academic and reputational image of this great University.”
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