Two Students of the Law Development Center (LDC), Akampurira Godfrey and Oriokot Simon Peter have filed a plaint in the High Court of Uganda, Kampala suing the institution for a number of complaints indicated in the court documents that Campus Bee has received.
The plaint filed on the 16th July 2019 is against LDC as an institution in its corporate capacity and Frank Nigel Othembi who is the Director of LDC who are being sued for “breach of contract, fraud, breach of statutory duty, and breach of the rules for passing the Bar course “
One of the issues raised in the plaint is the fact that they have been asked by the Institution to pay UGX 300,000 (from 100,000) to be able to do the supplementary exams, and UGX 2.5 million to redo a failed paper which they argue is against the rules that they signed while getting enrolled in 2017. To give a background, LDC passed new rules for the academic year 2018/2019. At the time the two students were studying, the older rules applied to them, but they argue that they are being subjected to the new rules which they did not sign.
According to the rules, once a student fails a subject, they are supposed to apply to redo that subject in the subsequent year. The students also challenge the interpretation of the words “subsequent year” which according to LDC is not the following year, but rather the academic year after the one that is currently running.
To illustrate, if one fails a subject in the academic year 2017/2018, the subsequent year would ordinarily be 2018/2019. In the interpretation of LDC subsequent academic year is 2019/2020 which the plaintiffs are alleging is a “personal interpretation” of the rules by the Director.
LDC has also been accused of intentionally causing unreasonable delays in releasing results, collecting admission fees for students who have already been admitted, that some students are selectively passed in a “hidden and secretive manner” without qualifying their results to the pass mark and that some students have been allowed to pay for supplementary exams using the old rules, while others and them inclusive have been subjected to the new fees.
Among the prayers they ask of court is to declare that to sit for exams in year after the subsequent year is unfair, irrational and unreasonable, a declaration that the defendants are in breach of the rules for passing the bar course, and an order for the forensic audit of LDC be made among others.
