A slap in the face to all bookshop users could be looming as the University relocates the Bookshop yet again to an undisclosed location.

Makerere University will demolish the long closed wooden structure between Senate building and CIT LAB 2 that sheltered what was Makerere University Bookshop to create space for the proposed multi-billion Julius Nyerere Leadership Centre.

“The facility will be a Centre for passing on knowledge to the young generation,” says Prof. Edward Kirumira, Chairman Julius Nyerere Leadership Board. “This will help to groom young people to follow the footmarks of the ideals Nyerere stood for and the legacy he left in Africa.”

Construction of the proposed 4.5 billion shillings facility is expected to start in about three years and Prof. Kirumira says that this leadership Centre will be a ‘tribute to Mwalimu Nyerere for his leading role in liberating Africa’ and “this wooden structure was particularly selected because it dates back to Nyerere’s student days at Makerere University,” he added.

Pastor Grace Kityo, a member of Estates Space and Housing Allocation Committee chaired by Prof. William Bazeyo; Deputy Vice Chancellor (F&A) disagrees that Makerere Bookshop was forced out of this wooden structure in order to create space for Nyerere Leadership Centre.

“We did not take them out, we just woke up and we couldn’t see a bookshop there,” said Pastor Kityo. He added that “if matters involve the President and the Vice Chancellor, that is a directive beyond us common people and when we receive it, we have to look for space that is within the University’s own masterplan then we allocate.”

Makerere Bookshop has now been closed for a semester and Pastor Grace attributes the sudden closure to losses made and cases of burglary. He reveals that the bookshop belonged to private individuals who went under the name Makerere Bookshop, was not a Makerere University project.

This Bookshop was first forced to relocate in 2015 to give way for the construction of Central Teaching Facility 1 and was temporarily allowed to operate in the current space where the Leadership Centre will be erected.

Pastor Kityo said “this is an academic setting and we value books, so the Bookshop has to be reinstated but first, students must petition the concerned authorities, especially the Vice Chancellor who I believe is a very listening person.”

“I went there to buy a book but I was shocked that the place was long closed,” says Rushongoza Begumya, a Bachelors finalist at Law School who has also published three books of poetry with Fountain Publishers.

He added that “it’s sad but at least I’m not surprised that the Bookshop closed: because the University Administration has never valued ideas. The establishment has remained consistent in killing rooms for generation of ideas and intellectual improvement, something that students can meet in books.”