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At the beginning of this year 2024, H.E Majid Saffar who is the Ambassador representing the Islamic Republic of Iran in Kampala Uganda flagged off 70 Ugandan Bachelors, Masters and PhD students who travelled to Tehran to pursue further studies. These 70 (only 8 of whom were Muslims) were selected after a rigorous vetting process to ascertain their eligibility to being admitted for studies at the famous Ahlul-Bayt-International University in Tehran.
The process had begun moths earlier in the preceding year 2023 when Gen Museveni’s SPA on Political Affairs Hadijah Namyalo Uzeiye, who also serves as Manager for the Kyambogo-based Office of the NRM National Chairman (ONC), agreed to work with the Iranian Embassy in Kampala to popularise and publicise the outcome of the very fruitful diplomatic engagement that had happened months earlier when then Iranian President H.E Dr. Ebrahim Raisi (died recently in a plane crash) visited Uganda.
The two leaders (Raisi & Museveni) registered profound respect and admiration for each other’s country with Raisi declaring readiness to work towards deepening bilateral relations between the two countries which share a lot in common including resentful rejection of imperialism.
The Iranian government officials followed up on this by identifying education and students’ exchange programs as one of the key collaboration areas that had to be given priority in the strengthening of diplomatic relations.
That’s how the offer of the 70 scholarships came to be prioritized. Unsure of how to adequately publicise the offer to enable a significant number of Ugandans to compete for the scholarships, the Iranian Ambassador reached out to Namyalo (herself an alumni who in 2013 had studied at a Iranian University).
She welcomed the opportunity and offered to use her ONC vast network, which stretches to every corner of Uganda, to publicize the information near and far so that every Ugandan was accorded a fair chance to compete. This explains why the 187 who applied came from the different parts of Uganda.
To coordinate the publicity for the scholarships, which Namyalo flagged off herself at her ONC offices, the SPA assigned three of her staffers to work with the Embassy to coordinate the information and make sure everything goes well. These are Hakim Kyeswa (ONC Digital Media Head), Patience Nyanjura (an administrative assistant) and Moses Kintu, a Publicist at ONC. These were the contact persons for ONC for purposes of the scholarships’ beneficiaries selection.
The Iranian Embassy proceeded to involve Amaal Tours & Travel CEO Esther Nankinga whose operational offices are located on Carol House along Bombo Road. She is a wealthy Muganda lady with deeply very consequential connections in the corridors of power in Kampala.
The ONC trio’s role was to disseminate the information about the scholarships while encouraging Ugandans to participate. People in Uganda have been through a lot and are these days very skeptical about such offers. Hence the involvement of ONC was vital in assuring all and sundry that this was a real credible and authentic offer, which Namyalo had verified and confirmed to be fraud-proof.
The processing of applications and verification of applicants’ academic documents had to be done by the embassy in close conjunction with Ms Ester Nankinga’s company-and among others UNEB and NCHE had to be involved to certify the authenticity of the applicants’ qualifications and academic credentials.
At the end of it all, 93 applicants were found to be eligible and qualified to enroll for Bachelors and graduate programmes at the Iranian University though initially only 70 were able to fly out. The 23 had inconsistencies in their documentation which required more time to validate and that’s how a decision was taken to give them priority under this year 2024 applicants’ list.
Whoever was cleared as eligible to go for free education in Iran was required to part with USD800 (roughly Shs3.8m) to enable Esther Nankinga’s company to purchase air ticket, cater for visa fees and admission fees to facilitate the 70 Ugandans’ enrollment into the prestigious Ahlul-Bayt-International University Tehran. The process was all transparent and parents had to be involved to help in the raising of the money for those students who couldn’t promptly pay it on their own. The money was fully receipted and whoever paid up got the acknowledgement.
Amaal Tours & Travels staff indicated to the applicants that besides training and education, there would be opportunities for some part time work which naturally made the offer even more tempting for many unemployed young Ugandans.
On reaching there, things some fell apart for some people because it turned out the anticipated jobs weren’t easily available. To be able to land some lucrative part time work, one was required to undergo the Persian language basic course for 9 months whereafter their job placement would be effected. Whereas many Ugandans speak it very fluently, there is limited use or even understanding of the English language in Iran.
Some of the guys who had travelled considered job placement more immediate than enrolling to the University to study. When it became clear this wasn’t going to happen, some of Ugandan students began revolting demanding to be returned back to Uganda.
Some had left their young spouses and children to look after and yet that capacity to provide for such dependants would only be attained if the anticipated jobs were secured immediately. The spouses back home began putting them under pressure and thereby making it hard for them to concentrate on studies.
Investigations conducted by this news website indicate that the most riotous have been students from the Ankore districts of Kazo and Kiruhura who keep inciting others to become disinterested in the Iranian scholarships scheme.
Many of them keep claiming to fellow students that they have information from President Museveni’s Private Secretary Norman Akampororo (who is one of actors the President directly deployed at ONC to work under Namyalo at Kyambogo). They keep deceptively telling other students that President Museveni released money for them as pocket money and upkeep, which the Iranian authorities aren’t transparent about.
This false accusation has greatly angered officials at the Iranian Embassy in Kampala who have registered their readiness to evacuate such trouble-causing propagandists back to Kampala. An offer has been made to even refund the USD800 each of those trouble causers paid so as to protect the good name of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
What has made the Iranians even more disgruntled, and officials at Esther Nankinga’s Amaal company more broken, is the fact the trouble causers are clandestinely being incited by some envious officials in State House whose sole objective is to soil the entire scholarship scheme in the hope that the same can, by extension, demonise the workaholic.
SPA Namyalo so that the President’s personal trust in her can gradually diminish and eventually get her replaced by Norman Akampororo or someone else that will be more agreeable to the powerful invisible actors constituting Uganda’s so-called deep state.
“There are some grievances among some of those students which are genuine and resulted majorly from miscommunication at the very beginning of the process. For instance, it was indicated there would be free accommodation, feeding and medical services provision. Whereas the same is true for both accommodation and meals, medical care isn’t entirely free: the students are required to meet up to 40% of the medical bills should one fall sick while in Iran.
The original impression students went to Iran with was that it would entirely be free which actually wasn’t the case. Such misrepresentation has created some resentment which, unfortunately is being exploited by Namyalo haters to demonise the entire scholarships scheme which was meant to be annual,” says a deeply knowledgeable source.
“Such hiccups aren’t entirely unexpected because this was the first cohort. Things can always get better as the scholarships scheme rolls into its second and the subsequent years. These are chiefly administrative hiccups which ought to be fixed so that students under the second cohort can go to Tenran with realistic expectations.
It’s legitimate for anyone to reach there and desire to be enrolled into part time employment so that they can study as they work but the reality is the speaking of the Persian language can’t be circumvented because English is limited use inside Iran. Those are the expectations that have to be managed better going forward otherwise the Iranian scholarships offer isn’t a bad thing at all.”
Another source disputed claims that the scholarships scheme had been used to commit acts of human trafficking. “Nothing could be further from the truth because that group of 70 involves very serious people including senior UPDF officers whose inclusion was well vetted and considered by the UPDF management. How can you commit human trafficking where such people are involved? Some are children of big people in the military and other parts of government,” elaborated a source.
Officials at the Iranian Embassy, who spoke on condition of strict anonymity, said that out of the 70 pioneers who travelled to and are still in Iran, at least 45-48 students are steadily learning and going about their studies without any complaint. And their parents are very grateful and recently reached out to the Iranian Embassy and pleaded with H.E Majid Saffar not to terminate the offer but make it annual and a standing offer to the people of Uganda so that genuine beneficiaries [not troubled with parenting and spousal demands back home in Uganda] can keep benefiting.
These parents are members of a WhatsApp forum on which they interact and keep in touch with their children in Tehran and they are planning a press conference to that they publicly thank President Museveni and his Iranian partners for such a life-changing offer.
A source at the Embassy wondered why anyone would go around propagating fake news about the students’ alleged unhappiness yet there is a WhatsApp forum where all the 70 are members besides Embassy officials and those of Amaal Tours & Travel. “How come that resentment doesn’t come out on that WhatsApp forum, which was created specifically to enable the students give all manner of feedback?”
This news website has also established that one of the students who successfully applied for Private Law programme and travelled to Tehran with the rest in February, is currently disgruntled and wants to come back to Uganda not because he is unhappy with anything much except this personal feeling that the stuff he is being taught won’t enable him practice law in Uganda because what he is being taught there is totally different from what and the way law is taught and practiced in Uganda.
As the dedicated 48 students (who have refused to crafted into anti-Namyalo schemes) prepare to complete their first Semester, the Iranian authorities (convinced that things will improve as more cohorts are enrolled) are looking forward to working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ONC and other stakeholders to begin preparations for the September intake.
“We might have encountered some hiccups as can be expected in the pioneering stages but we can’t, as implementers, let down the grand vision our political leaders had about the direction that bilateral relations between Uganda and the Islamic Republic of Iran have to take,” says a diplomat at the Tehran Embassy in Kampala.
It’s also true that some of the students can’t continue staying to study in Iran because joint verification by the Ugandan and Iranian officials recently established that at least some 4 Ugandan students got onto the list using forged academic documents even when they superficially looked as if they had been authenticated by both UNEB and National Council for Higher Education.
It’s now clear that officials at the two GoU education institutions were impersonated, even when the Ugandan security agencies were supposed to be involved in the verification and authentication of academic documents tendered during the application process.
Some of the courses (lasting between 2 and 4 years) on which the 70 successful Ugandan applicants were enrolled included private law, history of Islamic culture & civilization, criminal law & criminology, women studies, philosophy & Islamic Theology, mechatronics engineering, civil engineering, international relations, information technology, architectural engineering, business management and social communications sciences just to mention a few.
The above being the case, regarding what has happened so far regarding the Iranian scholarships scheme, one wonders why anyone would desperately be out to drag the ONC’s otherwise good reputation into the fictitious claims of the same being used as cover to facilitate human trafficking activities.
Whereas the three officials of ONC (Hakim Kyeswa, Moses Kintu & Patience Nyanjura) played some mobilisation role, which basically was about clarifying the information to potential Ugandan applicants who approached Kyambogo for guidance, it would be imprudent for anyone to attempt to implicate Namyalo personally in any wrongdoing regarding the Iranian scholarships scheme.
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