On Friday, May 27, Kakamega Senator, Cleophas Malala, made public his academic certificates in a bid to quash doubts as to whether he is fit to run for the county's gubernatorial bid in the August 9 poll.
The revelation came full circle for the aspiring governor who has been at the centre of claims of forging his academic certificates in order to meet the minimum threshold set by the law.
According to the Constitution, any aspiring governor should have at least a University degree.
The Senator, in a recent TV interview, addressed the rumours which had been doing rounds on social media for months.
Malala disputed the reports that he forged his certificates, noting he was called to Moi University in Eldoret via the Joints Admissions Board after scoring a mean grade of B plain at Friends Schools Kamusinga.
Revealing that he was admitted to study law, his father, however, transferred him to United States International University (USIU) over fears of the friends he had at the Eldoret based university.
“In 2004 I was at Moi University. The Joint Admission Board (JAB) admitted me as a law student. My father did not like my company in the university hence he transferred me to USIU where my siblings were studying at," he stated.
The claim's accuracy, however, is suspect as Malala's KCSE result slip showed he sat his final exam in 2003. The students sponsored by JAB in the KCSE class of 2003 joined university in September of 2005 - a year later from the time the senator claims to have been admitted as a government-sponsored student.
According to Malala, he graduated in the 2011 class but admitted to collecting the degree in 2019. The fact that the certificate indicated the year of graduation in 2019 did not help calm paranoid netizens who questioned the document's originality.
His explanation did not help his case as he told the journalists who asked about the contradiction that they would not understand how degrees work since they had not been to university.
"The degree reads 2019 since it's the date I collected it, but my graduation had been around 2010 or 2011 I do not remember the date but I know it was a clan affair and that is where I announced my intention to vie for the MCA seat. The problem with you journalists is that you have not graduated so these things may be difficult to follow," he stated.
Some pundits have speculated that the senator may have finished his course work in 2011 but went back to graduate in 2019.
However, unlike public universities, USIU does not allow students to defer for more than three years so if Malala completed his course work in 2010, he should have been required to start afresh his classes if he went to graduate in 2019.
Despite the confusion, a spot check by Kenyans.co.ke confirmed that Malala's name was in the USIU graduation list for 2011 and his documents have been certified by the Commission of Higher Education.
An alumnus of the institution, however, told Kenyans.co.ke that it is not uncommon to have your name in the graduation list even when they have not fully met the requirements to get their certificate.
"You apply for graduation two semesters before on the promise you will have cleared your course work. However, some are not yet done with their courses by graduation day and have to wait longer to get the certificate," the alumni intimated.
