PhD and all, Prof Kubasu wastes away in village barazas

As early as 4 a.m., long before thousands of cocks in this peasant farming and gold-mining village crow to announce a new day, the professor wakes up to find something to do to kill the boredom that comes from being unemployed.

In Bushiangala village, Kakamega County — a place where there are as many churches as there are houses, where polygamy is the rule and fathers do not count their children, Prof Sammy Kubasu has made a name for himself as being educated, experienced and out of work.

“Today, I woke up and travelled to Kakamega town to spend time with boda boda operators,” Prof Kubasu told the Sunday Nation.

The town, located about 10 km away, connects to the village through Bukura, then Shikulu wa Amasumbwa, Musoli and Isulu using Sigalagala road.

A ready ear

As one of the most popular sons of Bushiangala –– the other one being PNU activist Stanley Livondo, boda boda riders, jobless youth, elderly men who can no longer work and even the village women who love to gossip have found a ready ear in him.

Village drunkards are at his door as early as 6 a.m., not to wheedle some coins for a drink from the Prof, but to console their neighbour who has recently joined their jobless ranks.

A drink early in the morning makes the idle day pass unnoticed, they tell him.

At his home, Prof Kubasu is a very respected man, having risen from a family that could barely educate him (his master’s and PhD studies were funded by a German foundation on the basis of his neediness and merit) to be the head of the country’s university staff union -- the University Association Staff Union (Uasu).

On March 25, 2010, he was re-elected secretary-general of the Uasu chapter at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST).

On May 20, lecturers unanimously voted to keep him as their national chairman.

While his job description hands him the task of protecting and defending the rights of lecturers, ironically, it is his rights that have been infringed upon.

Last September, MMUST, a university with only one doctorate qualified staff for every 100 students, fired him from his associate professorship for declining appointment as a departmental chair.

“There are so many things that I can do, but I want my job back because it’s the passion of my heart,” he told the Sunday Nation.

The ridiculous nature of his firing, as assistant minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology Kilemi Mwiria termed it in Parliament, has been a matter of national interest.

Ironically, his tribulations came at a time when Dr Mwiria, a victim of past arbitrary firing from universities himself, is heading the Higher Education ministry.

Widely popular

When the 4,500-strong lecturers’ union threatened to strike until he got his job back, hurriedly organised talks between the union and the government promised that the widely popular professor among students and lecturers would get his job back by the start of the year.

But that has not happened. A letter he received a few days ago from the MMUST appeals committee supported the termination of his contract, saying none of his rights, or the Constitution, was violated in his sacking.

The university committee was supposed to give a report to the university council on his sacking and copy the same to other interested parties.

“Decision of his termination has not reached me,” Higher Education PS Crispus Kiamba told the Sunday Nation on Friday evening. “The soonest we receive the letter, we will act from there following procedures.”

In December last year, Dr Mwiria told Parliament that if by January he would not have been reinstated, then “the ministry can be blamed for frustrating Prof Kubasu’’.

Dr Mwiria noted that “the university gave him the two options, to accept or reject the new job offer, but fired him when he made his choice.

Prof Kubasu has kept a copy of the letter of his appointment with the words “I do accept or do not accept” clearly indicated at the bottom.

He says he declined the offer because of his many duties as Uasu chair, including negotiating with the university and government (something he could not effectively do as part of the university management), and for personal reasons.

UASU is filing a case in the industrial court over the matter.

It’s more than half a year since he was fired, and the village is working extra hard to keep one of their role models busy.

Recently they appointed him to head the local council of elders, and uses his position to address village barazas –– without pay.

And to make matters worse, his first-born child, who graduated with an MBA, has joined him in the ranks of the unemployed.