By Frederick Philander WINDHOEK “It is very disappointing and embarrassing for the education of Namibia to experience corrupt practices at its highest institution, which is supposed to be the centre of excellence; we are referring to the Unam officials that have been recently been implicated in corrupt activities.” This was said in a press release by the Secretary-General of the Namibia National Students Organization (Nanso), Neville Andre. “As a student organization we strongly condemn these people and we strongly support any initiative by the Unam SRC to fight corruption on campus. Corruption at Unam is tarnishing the quality of education, and only the students are the ones that are suffering from it, because students coming from Unam are being associated with the corrupt practices that are being practised by the university staff,” the press release stated. According to Andre, corrupt occurrences question the credibility of the degrees “from the highest institution” of Namibia. “At the same time it is also embarrassing our country, therefore it will lead to stagnation because it is no more attracting well-educated lecturers from other countries that can share their skills with Unam. It is therefore very important for all of us to take good care of the limited resources that we have, before the self-centred individuals like those at Unam steal it from the nation,” he said. Andre congratulated the university for exposing those individuals that have been practising corruption at Unam. “The students will assist in the fight against corruption on the campus. However, we would like to invite the Office of the President to establish a forensic investigation at Unam because we as students are tired of corrupt practices that are primarily affecting the student population at Unam. We are also inviting the Ministry of Education, the National Qualification Authority and the National Council for Higher Education to investigate the operations of all public tertiary institutions, because it appears that the quality of higher education is taken for granted by the public,” he said. He further charged that normally so-called internal investigations and disciplinary committees are used by these institutions to save corrupt individuals from being expelled and the matter being exposed in public. “So, we call for an independent body such as the Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate such corrupt issues. More and more members of our society are becoming poorer, while some egotistical individuals become richer through corrupt activities,” he claimed.