Kyambogo University council has decided to hand over the institution to the government after admitting failure to strike a deal between the lecturers and the vice chancellor Professor Isaiah Ndiege. The Council which is the university’s top decision making body in a meeting on Friday evening agreed that the Education ministry intervenes to either close the university, suspend Professor Ndiege, or expel the striking staff who do not want to work under the vice chancellor.
This follows the three day ultimatum which was given to the University Council by the Junior Education Minister Charles Bakabulindi, to resolve the ongoing issues or hand over the institution.
With this, it means that most of the university activities will be paralayzed, among which include the forth coming end of semester examinations, the graduation ceremony which is scheduled for the Mid December would have to be post pone due to delayed release of final results by most departments and clearance by the finalists. This will also impact by increasing on the university’s expenditure. Other businesses, like the hostels will also be affected since students will stay longer increasing the operational costs and leaving no time for any maintenance work to be done.
This will be the second time in arrow that the university will have to extend its semester into the holiday. Around the same period in the previous semester, students had to study throughout the holiday with only one week left for them to rest before the next semester can resume.
The Kyambogo problem has remained a challenge, and no one seems to have the answers.
As the Chinese say, when you lose your way, go back to your starting point. Kyambogo Council should go back to where these problems started and try to fix the cause, not the symptoms. It seems there is a lot of evil lurking in there at the University, which must be fixed at the root. Until then, our once most promising campus, may die untimely death.
The mobile revolution
Last week, Kenyan telecom giant Safaricom released their half year results just days before micro-blogging Company, twitter sold its shares to the public on the New York stock market. It is easy to forget that barely twenty years ago neither company existed. These two companies are symbolic of how mobile telephony has changed our lives irreversibly.
In most of our lifetimes, the phones were immovable meaning that you would have to miss your call when it came in if you’re not at your desk. One had to look for an internet café to send an email and people had to wait days while their photos were being processed in Nairobi.
With this “mobile revolution,” we are more efficient in the way we use our time. You can fire off a report from your desk, walk out with your phone making you available to answer any queries about the report and even make adjustments. You do not have to scour the town for an internet café to send emails and neither do you have to make the tortuous trip to town to get a good colour photo.
The society that becomes wealthier is that with the information and the means to receive and disseminate it quickly over a wide area. The greater access to mobile technology is making information to be relayed accurately and over a large area especially in lesser developed countries that couldn’t afford to roll out the massive copper networks that were required to make telephony universal.
It is therefore a stretch to say that in your phone you hold the destiny in your hands. And the challenge is to transform that potential energy into results. It has been found that acquisition of new knowledge actually makes physical impressions on your brain. And the difference between you and your richer neighbor is that he knows something that you don’t.
Sources: New Vision, Daily Monitor (11th November, 2013)
