Petitioner in My Degree Suit is a Hired Mercenary, Senator Sakaja Tells Court

Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja has responded to a petition seeking his disqualification from the Nairobi gubernatorial race over lack of a valid university degree.

Sakaja claims the petitioner Dennis Gakuu Wahome is a “mercenary” hired by unnamed powerful forces to subject him to public humiliation and deny him his political and social rights.

“I affirm that the gist of the petitioner’s suits challenging the validity of my academic qualifications are deliberately and primarily calculated to subject me to public humiliation, embarrassment as well as unreasonably restrict the exercise of my political and social rights under article 38 to be a candidate for public office,” reads court papers.

Sakaja rejected claims that his Bachelor of Science in Management degree from Uganda’s Team University is fake, saying that the questions raised by the petitioner are based on malice.

“That it is easy to unmask the scheme behind the filing of this Petition by the Petitioner as a mercenary, proxy, and a gun for hire by forces driven by malice and political witch-hunt,” Sakaja adds.

The senator further questioned the petitioner’s ability to access several documents such as immigration records and Jubilee Party nomination applications dating 2016.

“The Honourable Court ought to take judicial notice of the fact that such documents which the Petitioner seeks to rely on (whose authenticity are in question anyway- and we ask the court to disregard the same) are not usually easily available to persons that are directly connected to any underlying investigations, let alone busy bodies that are unconnected to the underlying investigation such as the Petitioner,” Sakaja submits.

Wahome filed the petition at the High Court after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) disputes resolution committee dismissed his complaint against Sakaja’s clearance to run for office. The tribunal ruled that it lacks jurisdiction to determine the validity of Sakaja’s degree certificate.

In his petition, Wahome argued that Sakaja’s Bachelor of Science in Management degree from the Ugandan institution is not genuine as he never graduated from the institution in 2016 as he claims.

He added that only six students graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in science in management on October 21st, 2016, and Sakaja was not among the graduands.

Sakaja insists that although the Commission for University Education (CUE) revoked his degree certificate, Uganda’s National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) had already confirmed that it is legitimate.