Strathmore University fires Professor Who Complained of Earning Ksh100K salary

Governance and policy expert Professor Fred Ogola has claimed that he has been fired unfairly by a local university as a lecturer.

In an interview with local media, the professor said he received his dismissal letter on April 6, 2023, when he was preparing to give a lecture that day.

According to reports, Dr. Ogola has been a Senior Lecturer of Strategy at Strathmore University Business School (SBS).

He is an international faculty member with IESE Business School, Spain (Leading Executive Education Business School in the world) and St Gallen University.

According to him, he did not justify his dismissal because the university said he had already secured another position at another university in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The letter states that Mr. O’Gora denied securing his job. This information was allegedly released by various media outlets.

However, the professor said his LinkedIn account was hacked and no such employment was obtained.

“I woke up one day and noticed that people were sending me congratulatory messages but I did not know why they were sending them.

“I then realised that someone had hacked my account and shared that I was starting a position as Dean of a university in DRC. I had to go back and delete that message because it was false,” Ogola stated.

At the same time, the University that was said to have appointed Ogola for the position wrote to the Kenyan university to inform them that they had begun discussions on how to engage the professor but had not yet made any official appointments.

The university also terminated Ogolla’s contract for inviting the media to a school event without the authority of the management’s board.

Ogola noted that the institution claimed that as a result of the media coverage, a misleading press release was published without internal review.

“There is no way I would have shared the content they wanted because that is against media ethics. I cannot share the content of a media house that they have not yet published. That media house even wrote to them to tell them that things don’t work like that,” he stated.

The professor had since appealed the termination of his contract holding that there were other external forces and reasons and was awaiting a response from the institution.

He also believes that the institution did not have enough evidence against him as they had earlier issued him with 6 warning letters with reasons that were not clear to him or accurate.

“There are rumours going around that there is more to the story. The university had earlier sent me warning letters just to find a reason to fire me. That was a very unholy action from the university to fire me on a Holy Thursday,” he added.

The professor had earlier revealed that the institution was paying him Ksh100,000 for his roles.

However, it is not yet clear whether the reports are true. A spot-check at University’s official website shows that Prof. Ogolla is still a lecturer at the Strathmore University Business School. 

Ogola is the Chief Executive Officer of the African Health and Economic Institute and Director of the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness among his part-time jobs as a lecturer t different institutions.