Prime
Queen Abenakyo’s degree challenged
Miss World Africa. Quiin Abenakyo
Kampala- The recently acquired Bachelor’s degree in Business Computing by the reigning Miss World-Africa beauty queen, Quiin Abenakyo, has been challenged.
According to an external Makerere University student, Mr David Musiri, the reigning African queen did not meet all the legal requirements for the award of the aforementioned degree.
To that effect, Mr Musiri has petitioned the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), the Academic Registrar of Makerere and the National Council for Higher Education to investigate what he calls the complicity of the vice chancellor in allegedly giving a female student academic favours for selfish reasons.
“As you may already be aware, Ms Quiin Abenakyo did not complete all the legal requirements for the award of a Bachelor’s degree in Business Computing yet she was allowed to pretend otherwise on 18th January 2019 with the blessing and enthusiastic handshake of our enigmatic vice chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe,” Mr Musiri avers in his letter to the academic registrar written yesterday.
The petitioner further alleges that the name of Ms Abenakyo was not included in the graduation book of Makerere’s recent graduation and that even her CGPA is unknown.
“Why should the rest of us suffer to register normal progress yet beauty queens will eventually receive preferential treatment behind closed doors, moreover in the office of the Vice Chancellor? Isn’t this a classic case of ‘marks for sex’ or ‘sex for marks’? Mr Musiri wondered.
Questions
Pictures of Ms Abenakyo in a graduation gown while greeting Prof Nawangwe made rounds on social media during the recent graduation ceremony.
At the tail end of his complaint, Mr Musiri says the purpose of his letter to the academic registrar was to place his concern before the Senate or its appropriate committees for internal investigation and relevant action, including recalling and revoking the ‘fake’ degree awarded to the beauty queen.
He has also warned that should the academic registrar decline to cause investigations into this matter, he will involve the Inspector General of Government (IGG), to investigate the university management for covering up this impropriety any longer.
According to the petition, it bears a stamp of Makerere University Academic Registrar’s office as having been received on February 5.
When this newspaper contacted Mr Vincent Ssekate, the spokesperson of the CID, he said he was not aware of a complaint against Ms Abenakyo’s academic award before asking for time to cross-check with his records.
“I have not received the letter but if given time like up to tomorrow (today), I can cross-check,” Mr Ssekate said by telephone last evening.
Likewise, when the Academic Registrar of Makerere University, Mr Namoah Masikye, was contacted, he briefly said he was busy in a meeting and therefore could not respond to my questions before hanging up.
In December last year, Ms Abenakyo was crowned as Miss World-Africa at the 2018 Miss World finale in China. She made history by becoming the first Miss Uganda to make it to the top five finalists.
