FDC's Lugalavu wins Kyambogo guild race

Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) candidate Lawrence Lugalavu has been elected the new guild president of Kyambogo University beating four other candidates.

Lugalavu according to the results announced by the guild electoral commission (EC) chairman Felix Hirya, scored a total of 3,010 votes beating his main challenger NRM‘s Solomon Ngoboka who garnered 2051 votes. Two other candidates in the race Fahad Bahat and Michael Aisu who both stood as independent finished a distant 3^rd and 4^th place.

Patrick Owona Komakech who also stood as an independent was disqualified from the race as his documents were discovered to be fake. 

Komakech according to a source from the electoral commission (EC) forged an admission letter among other documents that he presented during the nomination exercise; his university identification card was also expired implying that he had completed studies at the university hence ceasing to be a valid student of Kyambogo University.

According to a letter addressed to Komakech from the office of the chairperson guild electoral commission seen by New Vision, he was requested to provide evidence on March 29, to confirm that he is a student of Kyambogo University which Komakech did not respond to.

"We dully presented your documents to the Academic Registrar for verification. The results from the Academic Registrar ‘s office  indicate that Owona Patrick Komakech applied for certificate courses and was admitted for Certificate in Adult and Community Education under student No.140902012652, admission number 14/U/12652/CAC/PE in 2014/2015 academic year. You registered studied and graduated in January 2016," the letter read.

A communication was ran on the various notice boards with in the university informing students that Komakech was no longer a guild aspirant and that any ballots ticked in his favor would be declared invalid.

This was because he already appeared on the ballot papers among the candidates on the polling day and not much could be done to reverse the situation.

When contacted, Hirya confirmed the dismissal affirming that it is true Komakech had been disqualified from the race but declined to comment further on the matter stating that he had been given a directive by the university‘s acting dean of students Mildred Tibananuka who is also the administrator in charge of the electoral process, not to disclose any details on that matter since the case is still being handled.

Tibananuka had also earlier declined to comment on the matter.

Efforts to also reach Komakech for comment were also futile as he had his mobile phone was switched off and no one could trace his whereabouts.

The voting exercise which started an hour late from the scheduled time (8AM) was smooth and lasted about eight hours from 9 O'clock in the morning to 5 O'clock in the evening which was promptly followed by a vote tallying process that went up to the wee hours of Thursday morning when the winner was finally declared.