As Makerere’s 67th graduation ceremony draws closer, Campus Bee has learnt that about 200 students from the Institute of Statistics and Planning have had their results withheld and may miss out on the important ceremony.
According to a source that preffered anonymity, a one Mr. David Opiro, who is a lecturer at the same institute, has sworn not to release the results of the entire 2016 4th year class of these students until the university clears his salary arrears. The students were slated to graduate in February this year.
The source, a prospect gaduand in Bachelor of Science in Business Statistics, explains that Mr. Opiro has for close to a year now refused to release their results for the course unit Fundamentals of Marketing, Code BBS 3208.
Apparently, at the start of the stand off, the university held talks with Mr. Opiro and agreed to pay him the outstanding arrears so that he could release the results to enable the students graduate with their colleagues in February 2017. But to the lecturer’s dismay, the university turned around and only wired half of the arrears to his account. The lecturer did not take this lightly.
“He came to class and told us point blank that ‘until my balance is fully settled, you will never graduate. I will never hand in your results’. In the run up to this year’s graduation, nearly three graduation lists have been published but our names do not appear anywhere. We are worried that this standoff between the university and its staff is going to unfairly affect our graduation,” said the source.
Makerere holds one graduation ceremony, usually in January, every year. However, this year’s graduation ceremony is slated to take place from February 21 to 24 owing to the Nov. 2nd abrupt closure of the University. If the nearly 200 students miss this year’s graduation, they will have to wait until January 2018.
Campus Bee has tried reaching out to Mr. Opiro and the university’s PR office for their comments buts in vain.
