Makerere University Losing 1000 Students/Year to Gambling
At least 1,000 students drop out of Makerere University annually after losing tuition fees to sports betting, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, the Vice Chancellor has revealed.
Last week, Prof Nawangwe addressed attendees at the recognition and rewarding ceremony for the top 12 graduates of 2024 from the College of Business and Management Sciences (COBAMS). During his speech, Prof Nawangwe mentioned that research had been conducted following concerns about student dropouts resulting from an inability to afford tuition fees.
“Our investigations have shown that actually those people were dropping out not because they failed to pay fees. They got fees from their parents and wanted to invest in betting in order to get interest,” Prof Nawangwe said.
According to him, the same students hoodwink their parents and take them to the Freedom Square on graduation day yet they have never stepped in a lecture room.
Read Also: Olibampe Akingba Joins Mchezo Limited as Regional Manager for Africa
He added, “They ended up being broke and kept telling their parents stories. And parents don’t hear their names being read in the graduation booklet.”
There have been several cases of students losing their tuition to sports betting companies around the university.
Self Kidnapping and Educated Unemployment
in May 2023, a Makerere University student was reported missing after he allegedly kidnapped himself and cut off communication with parents, relatives and friends after losing his tuition to a sports betting scheme.
An exhaustive search that led to his arrest in Iganga established that the victim-turned suspect had rented a room where he was going to start coaching lessons. Prof Nawangwe used the same event to discourage graduates against moving on the streets of Kampala claiming they are unemployed. He instead advised them to move out anywhere in the world and work from there.
He instead advised them to move out anywhere in the world and work from there. He said, “The good thing is that the population in the rest of the world is going down everywhere in the world. It is only in Africa where the population is going up. With the decrease in the population, there are many countries now where there is a big deficit of skilled workforce.”
Source: Monitor
