Makerere University Associate Professor identified as Jude Ssempebwa reportedly sued the university on grounds of failing his PhD student.
The student’s thesis is said to have been marked by a hired external examiner who the professor claims had no required competence. Together with his student, who was identified as Peter Dithan Ntalewhile Prof. Ssempebwa sued the university alongside administrative officer, Professor Ronald Bisaso.
Ssempebwa says that Ntale became an innocent victim of Bisaso’s malicious campaign which he says was intentioned to undermine his supervisory role at Makerere University.
He adds that he carefully supervised Ntale’s PhD thesis in an Organizational Behavior and Development as the Principal supervisor for the entire period of the thesis writing.
However, he says that he was surprised when Bisaso appointed an external supervisor, Professor Wilson Mande Muyinda from Nkumba University who he pins of strong friendship ties with Bisaso.
Ssempebwa believes that the external supervisor failed his student.
“That the External Examiner failed the thesis wrongly on erroneous grounds that it lacked originality or significance yet four international refereed papers co-authored by the student based on the same PhD thesis had been published, which is more than evidence of originality and significant contribution according to the University’s own Handbook for Graduate Students”, reads Ssepembwa’s affidavit in part.
Adding that, “It was erroneous for the External Examiner to fail the thesis on grounds that the student spent only ten months in the field doing data collection when the examiners of the student’s research proposal approved this time schedule as realistic and the University assigns a minimum period of stay on the program of two years, which makes it realistic to spend no more than ten months of these in the field collecting data.”
According to Ssempebwa, right from the submission of Ntale’s thesis, Bisaso interfered with the process by irregularly directing the student to remove his refereed publications from the thesis or else he would not forward it for external Examination.
The professor and student now want an order directing Makerere University to perform its statutory duty and subject Ntale’s thesis to an independent external examiner.
They also want court to order the institution to compensate them with general and punitive damages as well as Shillings 200million as losses occasioned on them.
Court is yet to summon Makerere University to defend itself on the allegations before the matter is allocated to the Judge to fix it for hearing.
