Moi University ordered to pay 13 students locked out of graduation list Ksh.50K each

The High Court in Mombasa has ordered Moi University to pay 13 students Ksh.50,000 each after they were locked out of the graduation list.

This comes following uproar after names of at least 700 students were missing from the institution’s 38^th Graduation held at the main campus in Eldoret on Thursday August 22, 2019.

However, in a court ruling delivered on Wednesday, Mombasa High Court Judge Pauline Nyamweya stated that the action of omitting the 13 petitioners’ names from the list was “discriminatory” and violated their rights to “dignity, freedom from psychological torture and fair administrative action.”

“An order be and is hereby issued granting each of the petitioners herein an award of Ksh.50,000 as nominal damages for infringement of their rights,” read the ruling.

“The respondent be and is hereby compelled to avail each of the petitioners the reasons for their non-inclusion in the final graduation list for the 38^th Graduation Ceremony within 30 days of this judgement.”

The court further directed the institution to undertake all necessary internal procedure required to include the petitioners in the next graduation list and ceremony within the next 90 days.

Moi University is also expected to file a written report to the court on the progress made in compliance with orders issued within the same period besides bearing the costs of the petition.

The students whose names were missing from the list previously claimed that some of the lecturers willingly failed to release marks to quietly push for their pay and allowances with the most affected faculty being the school of business and Economics.

In the Nairobi Campus for instance, Citizen Digital learnt that close to 500 students at the faculty had to contribute on an individual basis an amount and forward to one of their lecturers for their marks to be released.

The university management however stated that many of the aggrieved students had huge fee balances and missing marks.