Speaker shelves varsities bill as MPs fault changes

The controversial Universities (Amendment) Bill suffered a blow yesterday after the Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi ordered that it be republished citing a lack of adequate public participation.

When the debate came up for the Third Reading on Tuesday, members led by Kimani Ichung’wah (Kikuyu) raised several points of Order questioning the constitutionality of the Bill.

MPs Gitonga Murugara (Tharaka), Owen Baya (Kilifi North), Robert Pukose (Endebes), John Kiarie (Dagoretti South) and Joseph Limo (Kipkelion East) requested the Speaker to make a ruling on the matters before proceeding with consideration of the Bill at the Committee of the Whole House.

They wanted the Speaker to rule on whether sufficient public participation had been conducted on the bill, with an emphasis on the involvement of public universities.

Education sector

In his ruling, Muturi said stakeholders in the higher education sector were not given sufficient time to express themselves on the proposed changes.

Ichung’wah claimed that public universities were being denied funds in favour of private ones.

“Funding private universities at the expense of public ones is not only wrong but illegal. This is public money which is not audited,” Ichung’wah said.

Murugara accused the government of plotting to change the law to enable it to control university councils, the top decision-making organs at the institutions of higher learning, by reducing their powers.

Muturi ruled that in the interim, and pending further interrogation of the constitutionality of the Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2021, the Bill failed to fully actualise the provisions of the Constitution on the need for reporting and audit of the utilisation of public funds allocated to private universities.

“The Departmental Committee on Education and Research failed to propose any remedy for action by the House to actualise these two provisions. The only proposal close to actualising one of these provisions is by the Member for Seme Constituency and the Member for Kikuyu Constituency,” noted Muturi.

He said that based on the submissions by the MPs and the plethora of amendments contained in the Order Paper, the harmonisation of the amendments proposed to the Bill by the Committee did not meet the dictates of Standing Order 131.

“That, the Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2021 be and is hereby ordered to be republished in order to take into account the concerns raised by Members and align it with the expectations of Articles 10, 43(1)(f), 201 and 229(5) of the Constitution,” Muturi ruled.

The Education Ministry had proposed far-reaching changes that sought to clip the powers of the councils including limiting the number of deputy vice-chancellors to three.

If enacted, the appointment of the vice-chancellors and their deputies would have been done by a selection panel and the Cabinet Secretary would have the powers to sack council members or ignore their decisions. The CS would have been given powers to hire, fire and vacate any decision of the university council members.

It also sought to take away the powers of the university council as far as the appointment of vice-chancellors and deputies is concerned.

The Bill also proposed that unlike previously where the appointment of the vice-chancellor was done by the CS after the recommendation of the University Council, a selection panel, which the CS would appoint, would conduct the recruitment.

Term expiry

The proposed law came at a time when the University of Nairobi was in the process of reconstituting its University Council whose term expires in 10 days.

Regarding the expiry of the term of the members of the Council, the bill had provided that appointments be done at different times to ensure their terms of office expire at different times.

Currently, the councils determine by lot which two of their number shall vacate office after a period of three and four years respectively to ensure continuity.

On the approval of the statutes of the universities, which is a function of the council, the bill had proposed that the council submits the statutes to the CS who would be responsible for the publication in the gazette.

Currently, the gazettement is done by the councils.

Had it passed, the University Council would have been limited to employing staff and approving policies of universities and budgets.

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