The High Court has provided unchecked sail through of political leaders with unverified academic credentials to occupy influential public offices mandated to shape the future of this country.
Effectively, government agencies mandated to authenticate if credential provided are fake or not will not scrutinise academic papers for political aspirants effectively facilitating free passage of intellectual political dwarfs and forgeries to pass unchecked.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has been instructed by the High Court to clear all Member of Parliament (MP) candidates who do not have degree credentials.
Justice Anthony Mrima announced today that the clearance will go ahead awaiting the outcome of a court petition brought by four aspirants.
“Pending the determination of the notice of motion herein, IEBC shall issue the petitioners herein and any other person intending to vie for the position of MP with a conditional clearance subject to the outcome of this petition and upon satisfying the rest of the conditions as imposed by IEBC,” Mrima ruled.
This comes after the Kenya National Qualifications Authority (KNQA) ordered the suspension of reviewing certification of local and foreign academic qualifications.
Juma Mukhwana, the Director-General of the KNQA, has stated that no academic certificates will be vetted for political hopefuls in the next General Election.
Prior to the nominations for political parties, KNQA and the Commission for University Education (CUE) began the verification process.
The two were supposed to provide their findings to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), which would then prevent hopefuls caught with forged documents from running for office.
Now that KNQA is out of the way, the exercise is in the hands of CUE, which experts say lacks the resources, staff, and competence to complete such a large workout in such a short amount of time.
Mukhwana said in a statement yesterday that the authority’s only focus will be on aligning and validating national and international qualifications into the Kenya National Qualification Framework (KNQF).
“This is to bring to the attention of the general public that there have been ongoing court cases regarding recognition and verification of qualifications, obtained in Kenya and those brought into the country,” said Mukhwana in a statement.
He did say, however, that a conference called by the Solicitor General last week resolved that the KNQA regulations governing the same be suspended in order to harmonize them with the KNQF Act.
“Students, colleges and universities seeking recognition, equation and verification of qualifications are directed to seek such entities as Commission for University Education (CUE), TVET Authority (TVETA) and Kenya National Examination Council, (KNEC),” he advised.
There has been a long-running battle between government authorities regarding who has the authority to acknowledge scholarly publications obtained locally or from other countries.