St. Lawrence Schools founder Lawrence Mukiibi was laid to rest at his ancestral home in Katende, aged 69 last Friday, but if the dead can hear all the buzz about them in their graves, he is probably not resting.
At his burial, the country was shocked as tens of children were introduced as his own, severalof them appearing to be under the age of 10. Stories started making rounds of how he had indiscriminately used his teachers and students for his sexual pleasure.
The family, led by his sister Regina Namakula has so far acknowledge 53 children with more than 30 others pending DNA tests. Some mothers and their children had already been known to Namakula who Mukiibi trusted with his secrets and had introduced them. These had been receiving help with monthly amounts deposited on their mothers’ accounts to avoid embarrassing scenarios of several women parading at Mukiibi’s schools seeking child support.
Polygamous man
Despite portraying himself as a staunch Catholic, there is one Catholic doctrine Mukiibi just couldn’t fulfil – being faithfully married to one woman. In fact Florence Kungu, the woman he had gotten married to at Rubaga Cathedral in 1993 had already quit the marriage over Mukiibi’s adultery that involved both students and members of staff. At the time of his passing, there were nine known women attached to Mukiibi. He lived a polygamous life with two women Betty and Dorothy staying with him at his official home in Nsangi. Some of his women have been teachers at his schools and they are identified as Ruth and Sarah of London College and Diana of Horizon Campus.
When the family gathered to tally the number of children on Saturday, several women claimed the Professor had left them pregnant. On top of a pregnancy, one was carrying a baby. The family decided that the pregnant women should first give birth so that DNA tests are conducted as some of them could be impostors wishing to take advantage of the situation.
Police however advised the family to take care of the pregnant women until they give birth and DNA is carried out to ascertain the paternity of the children.
“My appeal is that whoever is pregnant should not be undermined because of that. Even if you [family] denied the pregnancy, the responsibility is upon you people to make sure that these people are catered for until they give birth,” said Keti Nandi, the officer in charge of children and family affairs in Kampala Metropolitan East.
How he lured young girls
Some of the mothers of Mukiibi’s children are former students. The family however threatened that anyone who goes to the media to tell her story should seek financial support from the media hence their unwillingness to talk.
Though many of the former St. Lawrence students we talked to chose to have only positive memories of the man who shaped their futures, a man who until his burial was seen as a father figure fondly referred to as “daddy” instead of a sex predator that many people are now perceiving him to have been, some of his former students admitted that indeed Mukiibi was preying on students, though covertly.
“He liked the big beautiful girls who appeared mature. You know some girls grow faster than their ages. He liked the curvy girls,” a former student who requested anonymity told us.
“Some of those beautiful girls were appointed prefects and it meant naturally they had to keep close contact with the principal,” she said.
“There are girls who were given the duty of picking him from his car whenever he arrived at any of his compasses and escorting him to his office. They were always beautiful girls,” another student told us. It is also said that sometimes he got girls to “escort” him to tour other campuses.
“There are girls who had a duty to make for him tea in his office. The school had help staff and cooks, but he liked some students to make him his tea. Of course we didn’t know what would go on in there, but it all makes sense now,” a former student of Creamland campus told us.
Mukiibi was also known to be generous with money and often dished it out at talent shows at the school. The girls he took advantage of were also beneficiaries of his financial favours.
Who was Mukiibi
Mukiibi was 69 at the time of his passing. He left Uganda in 1976 after graduating with an Education degree from Makerere University and got a teaching job in Kenya. He returned after Museveni had taken power in 1986 and joined Edward Kasole at Kampala Parents School.
In 1994 he started St. Lawrence schools and he is remembered for saying that one of the reasons of venturing into his own enterprise is because teachers were poorly paid and he couldn’t see himself earning much in the profession he loved, unless he was his own boss.
Mukiibi started St. Lawrence Citizens School in Nabbingo, and would later expand to more campuses including Creamland, London College, Crown City, Horizon, Paris Palais, The Academy and recently founded the St. Lawrence University.
In 2006, Mukiibi won the Uganda Investment Authority Investor of The Year Award and soon after the Presidential Transformers Award. In 2014 he was awarded the National Nalubaale Heroes Medal. Away from the sex scandal that has tainted his image posthumously, Mukiibi was an accomplished self-made man.
Never ask an African man how many children he has
The public should have got a clue on the big number of children Mukiibi had when he was hosted by NBS TV in an interview last year. When asked about the number of children he had, Mukiibi said it was a taboo to ask an African man how many children he had.
He went on to mock today’s young elite who have only two or three children. “What will you do when you get rich?” he wondered. It seems he was speaking from experience because tens of Mukiibi’s children are very young, meaning he sired them when he got rich.
Tainted legacy
Away from the initial praises, Mukiibi has come under fire for his sexual exploits.
Former State Minister for Regional Cooperation, Asuman Kiyingi, is one of the public officials who have expressed shock that no one complained in his lifetime.
“No student, no parent, no employee, no labour official, nobody. No police file or intelligence loop. No hint at all from our nosy press not even the tabloids,” Kiyingi was quoted by online news outlet Chimp Reports.
“According to all accounts now there lived in our midst a very high profile sexual predator whose major preoccupation was defilement, fornication, adultery and siring children,” he added.
“We are made to believe that the spectacular successful education empire he owned and managed survived by chance! He was no entrepreneur or educationist to write home about. Just a paedophile who could never zip up!”
“My question is, why did the country remain so ignorant (if at all) about this man? Are all our institutions dead?” Kiyingi concluded.
Sins forgiven???
Msgr John-Wynand Katende, who led Mukiibi’s requiem mass, was quoted by The Observer saying Mukiibi sought a priest, repented his sins and was given the sacrament of anointing of the sick.
Katende was answering to queries why the Catholic Church had conducted a requiem mass for Mukiibi who was clearly adulterous, contrary to the church’s teachings. “What we are doing now is a post-mortem, but what Prof Mukiibi actually needs most are our prayers,” Msgr Katende said.
Mukiibi had asked people to celebrate his life and not mourn for him at his funeral but after the news of his randy ways, the only way people are celebrating is with Memes circulating on social media celebrating his sexual prowess.
He asked mourners to wear white, at his funeral unlike the traditional black, and they heeded to his request, but the white angelic ceremony he wanted to bow out with his been tainted with the scandals he will always be remembered for.