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Citizen Posts
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The Mathias Walukagga ruling has confirmed what many observers suspected even before the judgment was delivered. The core problem is not the individual candidate, and not even the court, but a policy gap in how Uganda treats A-Level equivalency for continuing university students.
Before the ruling, public debate centered on a basic contradiction. A certificate is recognized as equivalent to A-Level and valid for university admission, yet it is time-limited on paper. Such timebound limitations serve a legitimate gatekeeping purpose, preventing entry routes from becoming permanent substitutes for formal education.
However, the system provides no permanent, renewable, or substitute proof of equivalence for students who are still studying. This gap was bound to produce unfair outcomes, regardless of who appeared before the court.
The judgment itself merely applied the law as written. The court adopted a strict, literal interpretation because the legal framework offers no middle ground. There is no clause recognizing lawful university admission as conclusive proof of equivalence, no mechanism for renewing equivalence status, and no transitional protection for continuing students. Faced with this vacuum, the court defaulted to form, not because substance was unimportant, but because policy had failed to accommodate it.
The result exposes a blunt inequality. Mature age entrants whose certificates have expired but who have since graduated are protected by degrees and transcripts, while continuing students who followed the same lawful path remain exposed. The difference is not academic qualification, merit, or compliance, but timing, a hallmark of policy failure.
The ruling does not suggest that Walukagga’s academic progress lacks value. Instead, it reveals a legal framework that has not kept pace with academic reality. While Walukagga’s status as a third-year student at St. Lawrence University is not disputed, his claim to possess an education level equivalent to the minimum requirement for university entry is rejected.
A system that recognizes a person as academically fit to pursue a university degree today yet simultaneously declares that same person academically unqualified for another constitutional purpose that, in practical terms, demands a lower academic threshold, is internally inconsistent.
The solution therefore lies outside the courts. Parliament and education regulators must clarify whether lawful university admission conclusively establishes A-Level equivalence or provide a durable certification mechanism for those who have already relied on time-bound equivalency routes.
Without such legislative clarity, courts are forced to choose between competing but equally legitimate principles; strict formal compliance on one hand, and substantive academic reality on the other. In such circumstances, different judges, exercising sound discretion, may reasonably reach different conclusions without error.
The need for reform lies not with the judiciary, but with lawmakers and education regulators. Until this policy gap is resolved, courts will continue to face difficult choices, and individuals will continue to fall into a space the law itself has left unresolved.
Mathias Mulumba Walukagga-Dduka Ekibabu!
Frank Ddumba,
The Writer Is a Graduate Student in Data Analytics.
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