By Joseph Mtebe, Citizen Correspondent
Many of you will remember that there was a time during this semester that I could not attend lectures, or seen around campus for about a week due to emergency personal matters.

I had to give myself a week off to attend a relative’s funeral, which was being held out of the city. I had not sought permission. I could not bear the long and tiring process of doing so.

Besides, after you finally get one, it is only a few days off they will give you. It also does not mean you will not be doing your tests, quizzes or assignments. I took my chances.

As expected, during my absence Madam Munuo gave us an assignment. I would not have known had it not been for my constant chatting with friends on campus. Still, there was no way I could do it because the deadline was only three days.

So, I asked Hussein for a favour, to write the assignment for me and hand it in to Madam Munuo. He wasn’t surprised. He did it, though not out of pity for me, but because he had to.

You see, as law students, we start to inculcate the culture of legal brotherhood this early, so that it does not become a new thing after college. We often bail each other out in hard times.

Everything went well, and we all had even forgotten about the assignment until a fortnight ago when Madam came with sheets for us to sign our coursework. She also returned our assignments and tests.

On seeing my paper, I almost screamed because I scored 4 in each paper. Then Madam wrote on my paper, “Copied from 2345!”. That was Hussein’s registration number!

I quickly checked on Hussein’s. He also scored three 4s, and Madam also wrote on his paper, “Copied from 5432,” which was my registration number.

We were caught! “So, what do we do?” I asked Hussein. Madam Munuo had also instructed us to see her.
“Leave it to me,” Hussein said. Because she asked us to see her to defend ourselves, it was apparent she had not filled in our marks in the signing sheet. This meant, only a good explanation and she’d add up our marks.

Hussein came up with an idea. That, we hid his assignment, and claim that it was Madam’s fault that his papers were missing. This means she would have no original work from which she could prove that my assignment was copied from Hussein’s.

We were determined to prove that each of us did his own assignment, and there was no way our two assignments could be similar.

I commended Hussein for his brilliant idea. We waited until she was in the office with other lecturers so that they would all see how wrong she was.

We submitted our case in very clear language such that the whole office felt us. We could read their looks.
Madam only had one question, “Where is your assignment Hussein?”

Hussein strongly said he hadn’t gotten it, that Madam never returned it and it was her fault. I seconded his argument in nod.

“Madam, there is no evidence beyond reasonable doubt that we cheated, and as you very well know, no evidence no conviction,” I said.

“Hold on,” Madam said and left for her purse. We were delighted to think she was bringing her red pen to correct and give us our free marks.

To our surprise, she came with Hussein’s assignment. She was showing all the lecturers in the office from one table to another, while asking, “Eti, isn’t this handwriting similar to his? And how could they possibly come up with similar reasoning, facts and conclusions?”

We almost fainted. None of us had thought Madam Munuo could go to the extent of photocopying our assignments for future reference.
We didn’t argue further.

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