By KT Reporter
Come May 2027 which is next year, Prof Elly Katunguka will cease to be eligible to occupy the position of vice chancellor at Kyambogo university. Katunguka replaced Kenyan professor Isaiah Ndiege Omolo under whom he served as deputy VC.
The human resource manual of Kyambogo says that the new vice chancellor must be identified and named 6 months before the cureent VC’s contract expires.
Katunguka was a solid professor but his image was damaged last year when he tried to cling on as the chairman for the national council for higher education but he failed. He was accused of many reputation-eroding things, a thing which made the president and the education minister to become very disappointed.
As Katunguka clears his desk and as the university council prepares to have a search committee in place to look for a new VC, Katunguka has been accused of being one of the directors or shareholders of the ICT company HEMIS Consortium Ltd, a private firm which the University’s director for ICT Dr. John Okuonzi has been favoring to do many of the ICT deals at Kyambogo.
A whistle blower has written to the IGG asking her to investigate Katunguka and Okuonzi for favoring this company to be the one to do many of the juicy ICT deals at Kyambogo.
Even when its a new company registered at URSB in 2024, HRMIS Consortium has been getting big payments from Kyambogo University for doing things like sending bulk sms messages to students.
The whistle blower says that the IGG must investigate all the payments to HEMIS Consortium to see if conflict of interest charges can be sustained against both Katunguka and Okuonzi because both of them are registered at URSB as shareholders and directors of the same company which has been dominating ITC services provision deals at Kyambogo.
The whistle blower is also calling on the IGG to investigate Gulu university vice chancelor George Ladaah Openjuru, being the other director/shareholder in the company-HEMIS Consortium Ltd. Gulu University is also giving contracts to HEMIS Consortium Ltd and the whistle blower wants the IGG to investigate possible conflict of interest targeting Opoenjuru as the VC.
Dr. Umar Kakumba, a former deputy vice chancellor for Makerere University is another director/shareholder in the company which does ACMIS support, portal activation, general ICT support and results upload services for the universities.
HEMIS Consortium is based in Kyaliwajala near Namugongo. The company is limited by guarantee and its a non-profit making member organization. Its partners include the Ministry of ICT, NITA Uganda, NIRA, URSB, URA, MTN Uganda and RENU.
The company offers services like software development, data migration, IT consultancy services among others. And its clients include Makerere university where Kakumba is one of the big bosses, Gulu University which is headed by Dr. Openjuru, Mubs, Kyambogo University where some of its directors Katunguka and Okuonzi work as top management members, UICT, UNITE, Nakawa VTC, Seeta University, Uganda TC Bushenyi, UIAHM and others.
They also have Busitema university. The whistle blower also wants the IGG to look into the company’s tax compliance status.
