Second staffing scam hits UoN as process queried – Weekly Citizen

Another staffing scam has broken out in the University of Nairobi, following an attempt to recruit unqualified individuals to fill academic vacancies.

As Kenya grapples with impunity on the rampage at key state institutions including the judiciary, the ISO 2000 certified UoN is in a most scandalous spot after senior professors wrote to the vice chancellor Stephen Kiama protesting attempts to hire individuals who did not meet advertised academic requirements.

Worse, the director of the Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies, Owuor Olungah, who teaches Ethics, has been accused by colleagues of violating UoN academic ethical standards by bypassing adverised criteria in recruiting academic staff.

A protest memo dated January 13 2020 to the vice chancellor, and signed by Onyango Ouma, Wilfred Subbo and Khamati Shilabukha, accuses the university of using “opaque, and non academic considerations not specified in the adaverts” to recruit two female research fellows.

The memo calls for the process to be stopped and anomalies corrected “so that qualified and academically competent candidates who presented themselves for the interview can be hired”.

“We are concerned that weak candidates were recommended for hire based on non-academic considerations while leaving out strong qualified candidates some with PhDs,” the protest memo says.

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The two candidates in questions are identified as Peggy Nyamai and Doreen Odero, who were interviewed in January 7 2020 following adverts for vacancies that ran on local dailies.

The protest memo dubbed “Reruitment of Staff for the position of Junior Research Fellow at Iagas,” states:

“Ms Peggy possesses an MA in Development Studies while the requirement (as per vacancy advert) was to be in possession of an MA in Anthropology or Gender and Development Studies. An MA in Development Studies is not an equivalent to an MA in Gender and Development Studies and should not be treated as such”.

The second candidate Odera, did not even turn up for the interview at the UoN, but, instead, was interviewed by Skype from North Dakota State University in the United States where she is currently employed.

“Ms Nyamai has no PHD registration which is a requirement. The claim that she is registered at Iagas is false as her proposal has never been presented to the Iagas board… Ms Oderas did not even turn up for interviews in person, but was woken up from her sleep in North Dakota (US) to be interviewed by skype,” the memo to the VC Dated January 13 says in part.

The complaint to the VC and signed by senior lecturers in Iagas says the two women had no demostrable qualifications to be hired for the advertised jobs as research fellows at Iagas.

“The two have no demostrable research experience evidenced by peer reviewed publications as compared to other candidates who presented themselves for interviews…among questions we raise is how were they shortlisted and ranked higher than other candidates with PhDs,” the memo says.

The memo faults the interview panel for using what is described as “non-academic considerations” to squeeze the two women into sensitive teaching positions whose advertised requirements for qualification they fell short.

The dispute is likely to escalated beyond UoN corrridors of power following an application by activist Okiya Omtatah, to the vice chancellor invoking freedom of information Act to diclose all qualifications and processes used to hire the two women.

Omtata’s application dated January 17 is copied to the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission, the office of the ombudsman, DVC academic affairs, deputy registrar recruitment and training, principal College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Director, Iagas and director board of post graduate studies.

This is the second high profile staffing scam involving the UoN, where two vice chancellors have staked claims to the UoN’s CEO’s job, and which has sucked in the ministry of Education, the courts and the university council.

On the eye of storm is outgoing director of the Iagas Owuor Olungah.