Mbale, (UG): Police in Mbale, eastern Uganda are detaining Francis Owino, the Director of St. Mary’s Secondary School in the district after he was arrested for issuing students with fabricated results of the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE).
Owino was arrested on Friday following a tip-off from a concerned parent who claimed Owino had asked for sh1 million in exchange for genuine results.
Rogers Taitika, the Elgon Region Police Spokesperson, confirmed Owino’s arrest, saying that the police are actively searching for the other two school directors involved in the case.
The 2022 UCE and UACE results for the school are said to have been withheld by the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) due to the school’s alleged failure to pay the required examination fees.
When the school faced difficulties accessing the legitimate results from UNEB, Owino purportedly took matters into his own hands and issued students with counterfeit results to ease the tension at the time.
A total of 85 senior four and 16 senior six candidates from St. Mary’s Secondary School sat for the UNEB Examinations last year. These students have since been admitted to various high schools and tertiary institutions based on fraudulent results, jeopardizing the continuation of their academic studies.
Parents and students who were affected have sought the intervention of the Ministry of Education and Minister Janet Museveni to help resolve the issue and obtain genuine results, allowing the students to proceed with their education.
They expressed frustration, noting that they have invested significant sums of money in trying to obtain the results, all to no avail.
Sam Wayanga, one of the affected parents, said that he visited the examination body on Thursday, only to be informed that the school’s results had never been released.
Wayanga revealed that when Owino provided the fake results to parents, he requested a contribution of Shillings 50,000, claiming it was intended to repay a money lender from whom he had borrowed funds to pay UNEB for the results.
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