She paid her fees on time. She completed the dead year process. Her results have been missing for a year. She has been tossed around, ignored, and dodged. And she is done staying quiet about it.
A Kampala International University student has taken to X in a post that has been circulating widely on Ugandan campus Twitter, delivering one of the most direct and detailed indictments of a private university’s administrative failures seen in recent memory.
Anita Asiimire Uwamahoro, a journalism and mass communication student at KIU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, posted her frustration on Tuesday in a thread that opens with three words — “TO HELL WITH KIU” — and proceeds to lay out a year-long administrative nightmare in specific, documented terms.
“I joined KIU because it was the leading private university. I wanted a good private university for my course. This has been the worst university you can ever go to,” she wrote.
Uwamahoro’s grievance is not vague or general. She explains it with precision.
She took a dead year — a recognised academic process at Ugandan universities that allows students to temporarily suspend their studies. She went through the entire formal dead year procedure as required. She resumed her studies after the dead year. And then her results disappeared from the system.
“I’m so tired of begging for my results for months, actually a year now and their excuse is, I took a dead year. Meanwhile I went through the whole process of a dead year and after resuming, my results became a big problem.”
When she followed up, her results were missing. When she escalated, she was moved from one person to another. When the university ran out of excuses, the calls stopped being answered.
“Always missing in the system, they toss you from one person to the other, when they’re out of excuses, they start to dodge your calls.”
She adds the detail that makes this particularly hard to dismiss as a misunderstanding: she was never a late payer. Tuition, on time. Extra fees, on time. Every financial obligation met. The university’s side of that transaction — producing and maintaining accurate academic records — has not been honoured.
“I diligently paid for my tuition always in time even the extra fees never came late, but this is their payment to me. Shame on all of you especially the CHSS, department of journalism and mass communication.”
Not everyone’s experience matches Uwamahoro’s. Douglas Okello replied to the thread with a different account.
“Personally, no complaints. They treated me well. I got everything on time including recommendations for NCHE.”
It is a reminder that institutional failures are not always universal — one student’s nightmare does not automatically define every student’s experience. But it also does not cancel Uwamahoro’s reality. Both experiences can be true simultaneously, and the fact that some students receive good service makes the inconsistency a more troubling story, not a less troubling one. It suggests the problem is not systemic incompetence across the board but selective or departmental failure — which raises questions about why some students fall through the cracks and others do not.
Missing results are not a minor administrative inconvenience. For a graduating student, results are everything — they determine graduation eligibility, affect job applications, dictate whether a transcript can be released to an employer or a postgraduate institution, and in some cases determine whether NCHE recognises your qualification at all.
A student who took a dead year through the proper channels, resumed study, paid every fee, and is now entering their second year of chasing results that disappear whenever she asks about them is facing a genuine barrier to her own future — one created entirely by her institution’s failure to maintain basic administrative competence.
KIU markets itself as Uganda’s leading private university. That is the positioning Uwamahoro trusted when she chose it for her journalism degree. The gap between that marketing and the experience she is describing is the heart of her anger.
Campusbee.ug reached out to Kampala International University for a response and will update this story when one is received.
