President Paul Kagame’s recent visit to Huye district and the National University of Rwanda did not only humiliate his Minister of Education Prof. Rwakabamba but left many academic scars on the Students who will never have a chance to re-take any missed paper for whatever reasons.

Paul Kagame with Pof Rwakabamba and James McWha

While President Kagame was responding to the question of one of the Students who was asking on the new law that will bar students from taking some missed papers, the President failed to recognize that  Students have different reasons why they miss or fail to get the required pass mark. I wonder whether the Rwandan leader was challenged by his Ministers on this issue, who by random guess the majority did their re-sit during their studies.

The problem of Rwanda and Rwanda Cabinet in particular does not tell the president the truth, they either fear to tell him the truth or indifferently side with whatever the president tells them. President Kagame is not an expert in everything; the Minister of Education would be the eye of the President, as an Academic the Rwandan Minister of Education Prof. Rwakabamba would have stood ground and tell the President that re-taking the missed or failed papers in any University is an academic right not a privilege.

University allows those students who have not managed to achieve the required pass mark in all the papers, for example if a Dr requires a degree of pass mark in all subjects but because of environment like lack of laboratory facilities or bursaries that don’t come on time, such a student passes all the modules except one which would deny him graduation if he does not take a re-sit, why should you end the life of that person there or miss such an important Dr in the country? Moreover someone who passed all the modules might not be cleverer than the one who missed one module.

The Rwandan problem is that, Kagame is not regarded as a human being but as a superhuman and he regards himself as such. Furthermore, President Kagame has no any academic paper, only the honorary PhDs from American and other Universities who wanted to exploit the Rwandan situation and gave as many Doctorates to Kagame as they could.

Why should you entrust all academic issues to a person who has never landed to the doors of the University? I would argue that President Kagame might be confusing secondary education and the University.

What is the difference between a Secondary School and a University? This confuses President Kagame because the words seem to mean the same things to him.

To make it easy for H.E, the Secondary Education covers a wide range of issues testing a wide range of abilities for students while the University focuses on academic and professional programs, hence a lot of specialization, Research and time consuming.

H.E might be lucky that most of his degrees were given to him free of charge, because of his experience he might think that this will apply to all the Rwandan Education.

I think the Rwandan Leader should be advised on this decision because this does not only deny a chance to students, but might be very detrimental to the state public funds, since some students are beneficiaries of the Public Bursaries.

One of the Students was explaining to the President about the retroactive law that will apply to all the Students, while the Students took the burden on their shoulders to question the president, the academic staff of all the Universities failed to raise this issue to the President as unfair and inconsistent with the academic discipline.

Indeed, this will breed the following:

i)Corruption, as many students will strive to use all means necessary to achieve the required pass mark, they will pay bribes in monetary form, or ladies will end up selling themselves to those who have marks. This will not only worsen the academic performance of our country but will also compromise the achievements of fighting HIV&AIDS in our country.

  1. ii) Without proper education Rwanda risks joblessness followed by unemployment and risk of crime, this is something that the Rwandan head of state and those surround him don’t recognize.

Researchers have concluded that children who were disadvantaged tend to export their experiences to others in their later years as leaders or families in form of domestic violence. President Kagame’s experience tells it all, he has never had a chance to go to the University and see life there, indeed, the only degrees he has been offered because are those of his brutal methods of governance. It is for this reason that the Human Rights Link with its partners wishes to inform all those Rwandan Students that, we shall seek funds to help all the Rwandan students who will be disadvantaged by the Kagame education policy.  We also appeal to the Rwanda Civil Societies to come out openly and challenge this decision as it might prove disastrous and catastrophic like abolishing French Language in Rwandan Schools.