A committee that was tasked to investigate marks alteration at Makerere will produce its interim report next week, the university's vice chancellor Prof John Ddumba-Ssentamu has confirmed.

In the report, according to Prof Ddumba, the ten-member committee that is headed by Dr Damalie Naggitta, is expected to provide a financial statement and a some findings from the investigation.

According to letters that leaked from Ddumba's office last week, the committee had failed to do its work due to under-facilitation. It's on this ground that Prof Ddumba asked the University Secretary Charles Barugahare to approve disbursement of Shs 80million of the Shs 300,008,000 that the committee asked for.

On allegations that Dr Naggitta's committee had bloated the budget, Prof Ddumba said the issue was blown out of proportion because it may be true they really need that exact amount, considering the work they are supposed to do.

BACKGROUND

The committee was started in response to a flurry of media reports that some of the university’s graduates had
acquired fake degrees after bribing some individuals.

The senate, the university’s highest academic decision-making body, approves the final marks and grading for students before the graduation list
is confirmed and released.

The reports cited a Facebook account bearing names of Sultan Ed Eddy, who claimed to be a student at the university, but was linked to a one Jack Mathew. He was alleged to be working with someone in the senate to change
marks. Subsequently, Eddy started linking other students from the institution to Mathew for the same purpose.

Mathew, through Facebook chats, alleged that he had access to university database and he could fix missing papers and marks. He also claimed that if a student had a retake, he could help to get rid of it by giving a better mark, adding he was able to do the alteration for most of the colleges
except that of Computing and Information Science.

The deal then was that marks for each course unit could be changed at a cost of Shs 100,000. Many students in 2015 were reported to have used Mathew to change their marks to graduate. At the time, Makerere University trashed the reports, dismissing them as were rumours. However, behind the scenes, the vice chancellor decided to set up a committee to study the matter.

When contacted on Friday, Prof Ddumba-Ssentamu declined to comment on the matter. Officials in his office told us they were concerned that the matter would be blown out of context, due to the ongoing crisis going on between Prof Ddumba-Ssentamu and Prof Nawangwe.

The two officials recently traded letters in which they accused each other of mismanagement.