The issues besieging Makerere University make my mouth open and drop with alarm. Nobody knows the exact number of students at the university! And so, Museveni’s visitation committee has ordered for a mandatory headcount of all students! I am sitting in my house and laughing at this guffaw. The rot at Makerere runs deep and wide. The buffoonery and mediocrity is alarming!
What is the use of records and databases? What is the use of all the lists developed from pencil pushing tasks of admission, registration, daily attendance lists, exam lists, etc? How is it possible that all the university administrators responsible for students do not know the exact number of students in the university? Who does this uncertainty of student numbers serve? Who benefits from public ignorance about the total number of students? How does the university explain away this sloppiness?
And Makerere still has the audacity to boast about teaching Statistics, QE, Mathematics, IT, Management and Administration, yet the university gurus cannot agree about how many students they have! Ayayayaya… So: there are students doing fieldwork in field sites away from campus, students on international exchange programs abroad, students attending conferences outside Kampala or across borders, etc. What will happen to all these students who will miss the headcount?
Will this process of counting students solve the puzzle of numbers or in fact, isn’t it just going to generate another meaningless number competing against all the other meaningless numbers out there? The rotting things that accomplished mediocres generate!!!
By Stella Nyanzi
