In a post on his X handle yesterday, Joseph Sabiti said he missed “that newsroom adrenaline more than five years after stepping out” of journalism.
Kin Kariisa, the chief executive of Next Media, his former boss, replied, “Come back, Jose”.
To a casual observer, Sabiti’s tweet would have passed off as innocuous, nothing to write home about.
Yet to those who know what has transpired in the past week at Parliament, Sabiti’s position may be untenable.
Multiple sources have told Bbeg Media that the former principal press secretary to the Speaker of Parliament is set to leave the institution after failing to prove, to the team verifying academic and other documents of staff, that he holds a master’s degree.
Last week, The New Vision reported that up to 182 staff at Parliament had been recruited irregularly under Among’s tenure. Sabiti, we have been told, is among them.
Sources said that he is counted among staff considered to have been irregularly recruited because the job he held required the holder to have a master’s degree, which he didn’t have.
When he faced the team verifying staff academic documents, Sabiti presented provisional results for the master’s programme in Strategic and Corporate Communication, which he is pursuing at Makerere University.
The team, however, wanted a transcript or a certificate.
We have been told that Sabiti was in the first cohort of people who pursued the degree after the Department of Journalism and Communication phased out the master’s degree in journalism and communication.
Sabiti joined in 2022 with former NBS TV colleague, Mildred Tuhaise. Others on the programme were Sarah Kagingo and Damalie Mukhaye, a former Daily Monitor reporter. Tuhaise, Kagingo and Mukhaye graduated in January last year.
However, Sabiti did not complete the programme after he encountered challenges at the research phase, sources said.
Last week, Parliamentary Commissioner Susan Abeja said that staff who were promoted irregularly could be reassigned to suitable positions.
Speaker Jacob Oboth-Oboth has told staff that the exercise is not a witch-hunt and that the new leadership does not want anyone to lose a job.
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Yet Sabiti’s troubles began months before the verification. In August, Oboth-Oboth appointed Dr Arinaitwe Rugyendo to replace him as principal press secretary.
After Oboth-Oboth was elected Speaker, Sabiti was moved into what staff calls the staff pool. He had no defined role and no department.
Sources say he was later told that without proof of a master’s degree, it would be difficult to elevate him. He could instead be demoted, a prospect he is understood to dislike.
However, a second return to Next Media in seven years would come at a cost. NBS TV would pay Sabiti far less than what he has been earning at Parliament.
For now, he is in a difficult position. He has no clear job at Parliament, a possible demotion hanging over him, and an invitation from his old newsroom that pays much less.
