Paul Amoru
21 August 2008
Kampala — Final year students at Law Development Centre were yesterday ordered to abandon an exam paper prematurely after top administrators learnt that the paper had been leaked.
Commercial Transaction, reportedly the most failed paper at LDC leaked to more than a half of the candidates.
Daily Monitor learnt that the paper was in circulation on Tuesday night and that most of the students spent the whole night apparently going through the leaked paper.
"Most students saw the paper, only those without friends must have missed it, and it was those who did not get it who reported the leakage," a well placed source at LDC, who did not want to be named for fear of victimisation, said.
The source told Daily Monitor the information was sent to the head of Commercial Transaction, Mr Twesigire through a cell phone message.
"Mr Augustine Twesigire walked into the exam room with other invigilators and cancelled the paper, drawing mixed feelings from the students," the source added.
The botched leakage prompted an emergency meeting of top management, chaired by LDC Director Elija Wante. The students' guild speaker attended the meeting and Daily Monitor has since learnt that the paper might be rescheduled for Saturday.
The law school has increasingly come under stinging attacks to explain why so many students fail every year having discontinued 71 students this year alone.
Some students say the discontinuation was influenced by some lecturers who unfairly fail and pass some students. Daily Monitor could not reach Mr Wante for comment.
The development might lend credit to such allegations and a revelation of even a much deeper problem. LDC is a multi-purpose training, research, scholarship, publication and law reform institution established by an Act of Parliament in 1970.
One of its main functions is the delivery of practical training to graduates of recognised universities. Most of the graduates, following completion of the Diploma in Legal Practice, are either absorbed in the public service as state attorneys, magistrates, public corporation legal officers or find outlet in the private sector working with private law firms and NGOs.
Up to the early 1960s, to qualify to practice law in Uganda, one had to be a Barrister or Solicitor trained in England or in a few cases, India, South Africa and Ireland.
By press time, it was not yet established whether the management had found out how the paper found way into the hands of students or any student would be punished for the same cause.
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