This year, the 60th Graduation Ceremony of University of Nairobi will not be business as usual as top government leaders are also on the graduation list.
Deputy President William Ruto will on Friday, December 21 graduate with a doctorate from the University of Nairobi. He is expected to graduate with a PhD in Plant Ecology, a course he enrolled for in August 2012.
The title of his thesis is ‘Influence of human activities on land use changes on environmental quality of riparian ecosystems: A case study of Saiwa Swamp watershed, Western Kenya’ which he defended at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nairobi.
Ruto’s long-awaited graduation will change see him change his title to Dr. William Ruto after six good years of pursuing the PhD and having his name removed from the graduation list in 2016.
Meru Senator Mithika Linturi is also expected to finally graduate and acquire a law degree from the University of Nairobi tomorrow. Linturi’s journey has not been an easy one as he was last year deregistered by the University on claims that he presented fake papers to secure admission. He was to graduate on December 22 2017 and join the masters class but that never happened as he did not graduate.
After the deregistration, Senator Linturi sued the university, accusing it of participating in political witch-hunt spearheaded by his opponents, whom he named as former Meru Governor Peter Munya and a Mr Milton Mugambi Imanyara.
“It was illegal, unreasonable and an utter show of bad faith for the university to deregister Mr Linturi without conducting its own independent investigations or informing him at the very least so as to afford him the right to be heard,” said his lawyer Tom Ojienda said in the suit filed at the High Court.
The battle led to a ruling in May by Judge George Odunga, who ordered UoN to readmit Linturi.
Also on the graduation list is Devolution Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa and Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu whi will both be conferred with Master’s degrees in Law.
The top government officials will tomorrow graduate alongside 9,000 other graduands at the UoN square beginning 7:30 am.
Are you also trying to figure out the correlation between plant ecology and politics?