enenlegalworld

Tag: Democracy

  • When the Constitution Loses Its Teeth: A Lament After Faruku

    When the Constitution Loses Its Teeth: A Lament After Faruku

    Imagine your son leaves home to go to the farm.

    He never returns.

    Days become weeks.

    Weeks become months.

    You move from police station to police station looking for him.

    Nobody tells you where he is.

    Nobody tells you what he has done.

    Nobody tells you when he will come home.

    Then one morning, somebody calls.

    “He is being produced in court.”

    You rush there.

    He arrives limping.

    His mother begins to cry.

    Even before he speaks, everybody in court can see that something happened.

    The State says he is a criminal.

    He says he was tortured.

    The Court agrees that his rights were violated.

    But the trial continues anyway.

    That is why the Constitutional Court’s decision in Faruku Muhamed and 2 others v Attorney General matters. A copy of the judgment can be accessed here

    Many Ugandans will never read the judgment.

    Many will never understand the legal arguments.

    But every Ugandan should understand what is at stake.

    Because this case is not really about criminals.

    It is about power.

    For nearly twenty years , in cases like those of Uganda Law Society and the famous Kayunga riots Uganda’s courts had been slowly teaching the State a simple lesson:

    There are some lines you do not cross.

    Some rights are so important that violating them comes at a heavy price.

    That principle was not created to protect criminals.

    It was created to protect citizens.

    It was created because Uganda knows what happens when people in power stop fearing the Constitution.

    Our Constitution was not written in paradise.

    It was written after years of arbitrary arrests.

    Years of torture.

    Years of disappearances.

    Years of constitutional crises.

    Years in which the ordinary citizen stood almost naked before the power of the State.

    The framers understood something simple.

    A government should never be allowed to break the law in order to enforce the law.

    That is why some rights were declared non-derogable.

    Untouchable.

    Non-negotiable.

    Beyond convenience.

    Beyond politics.

    Beyond excuses.

    The Faruku decision changes that conversation.

    The Court has not legalized torture.

    The Court has not abolished constitutional rights.

    The Court has done something more subtle.

    It has reduced the cost of violating them.

    And history teaches us that constitutional decline rarely begins when rights are abolished.

    It begins when violating them becomes cheaper.

    Supporters of the decision ask a fair question.

    Should a murderer walk free because he was tortured?

    Should a terrorist escape punishment because his rights were violated?

    Those questions sound persuasive.

    Until we ask another.

    If the State already had enough evidence to convict, why was torture necessary in the first place?

    Why break the ribs?

    Why remove the fingernails?

    Why apply electric wires?

    Why violate the Constitution at all?

    That is the question Uganda should be asking.

    Instead, we are being encouraged to focus on what happens after the violation.

    Sue for damages.

    File another case.

    Seek compensation.

    But every Ugandan knows the reality.

    The person who emerges from years of detention, trial, imprisonment, poverty and trauma rarely possesses the energy, resources or influence required to start another legal battle.

    The remedy exists on paper.

    Life exists in reality.

    And those two things are not always the same.

    Perhaps the most frightening symbol of this reality is a single word.

    “Drones.”

    There was a time when a drone was something that flew in the sky.

    Today, many Ugandans hear that word and think of something else entirely.

    Think about how abnormal that is.

    Think about how much had to happen before an entire country accepted that vocabulary.

    Think about how many stories are hidden inside that single word.

    The abnormal has become normal.

    The shocking has become routine.

    The unacceptable has become familiar.

    And when that happens, constitutional erosion is already underway.

    Some people will say these concerns are exaggerated.

    They will say rights still exist.

    They will say courts remain independent.

    Perhaps.

    But constitutional history is filled with societies that discovered too late that rights on paper are not the same thing as rights in practice.

    A Constitution is not tested when it protects the popular.

    It is tested when it protects the unpopular.

    It is not tested when it restrains the weak.

    It is tested when it restrains the powerful.

    The true measure of constitutionalism is not how the State treats those it likes.

    It is how the State treats those it fears, suspects, opposes or despises.

    That is why this moment matters.

    Not because a criminal might benefit.

    But because power always expands into spaces where consequences disappear.

    Today it may be a suspected criminal.

    Tomorrow it may be a journalist.

    The next day it may be a businessman.

    The day after that it may be an opposition supporter.

    One day it may be your son.

    Or your daughter.

    Or you.

    The Supreme Court may yet reverse this decision.

    History may yet correct it.

    But the real answer will not be found in law reports.

    It will be found in what follows.

    If State agencies become more respectful of constitutional rights, perhaps the Court’s faith in alternative remedies will be vindicated.

    If they do not, future generations may look back upon Faruku as the moment Uganda’s Constitution was not destroyed—

    but the moment it was asked to stand aside while power carried on with business as usual.

    Our Constitution was meant to be a fence around the citizen.

    A fence is only as strong as the dog that guards it.

    If the dog can no longer bite, only the thief has reason to celebrate.

    That is why some of us are mourning today.

    Not because the Constitution is dead.

    But because it has been asked to whisper where once it could roar.

    DISCLAIMER:

    The contents of this Blog are not intended to be used as a substitute for legal advice. The author shall not accept liability for use of the contents of this Blog as legal advice. Readers are encuraged to consult qualified advocates for real life situations for legal advice.

    JOIN THE UNDERGROUND AND FUEL THE MOVEMENT

    We have created a dedicated fans WhatsApp Channel. Don’t miss the latest updates, get early bird access to our latest blog posts and more, so much more. Click the following link to follow the Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb9BQqw5a246bWVsLl3j

    Independent institutional critique and advocacy for a radical overhaul of legal culture require time, deep research, and uncompromised independence. If these narratives bring value to your legal journey or challenge your perspective, please visit our HOME PAGE to see how you can support this platform directly and keep the critique fierce and relentless.

    Enen Ambrose. Advocate

    Member, Judiciary Affairs Committee,

    Uganda Law Society

    & Founder–Enen Legal World

  • Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama — Episode 4

    Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama — Episode 4

    When the Accused Becomes an Ornament

    A procedure that turns courts into shrines of injustice, where freedom is a fairy tale and land is lost

    Author’s Note: The Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama is a serialized literary commentary designed to constructively critique the institutional and structural implications of the Magistrates Courts (Amendment) Act, No. 6 of 2026. This work is a creative exploration of the human infrastructure behind public service and is not intended to ridicule, embarrass, or undermine the integrity of the Judiciary.

    The stack of criminal files had not moved in eight years.

    One hundred of them.
    One hundred human beings.
    One hundred stories of land, hunger, and a law that refused to die.

    His Worship Mulyanyama picked the top two files.

    File No. 67 – Yokoyadi Okello. Charge: Aggravated Robbery.
    File No. 68 – Emmanuel Odongo. Charge: Murder.

    The State had never filed committal bundles. The accused had been on remand since before the last census. Neither could be granted bail – not by Mulyanyama. Only the High Court could do that. And the High Court had done nothing.

    Yokoyadi’s Hoe – Eight Years

    Yokoyadi was the elder brother of Ocen Okello – the bean supplier who had been chasing a school’s debt for four years. When their parents died during the LRA insurgency, Yokoyadi dropped out of school. He worked as a porter, a brickmaker, a night guard. He never went to court. He only wanted to protect the three acres their grandfather had cleared with a machete.

    Then Majutu arrived. An urban elite. A man who bought land after the war and spoke of “development.” Majutu wanted Yokoyadi’s plot. He offered a pittance. Yokoyadi refused.

    One morning, Majutu’s workers came to mark the boundary. Yokoyadi ran out with his hoe. He did not swing it at anyone. He struck the ground between them. He shouted: “Either you kill me first, or I die on this land. It will not leave my family.”

    That evening, Majutu called a police officer he knew. He reported aggravated robbery. He claimed Yokoyadi had threatened him with a deadly weapon – the hoe – and attempted to steal his mobile phone. There were no witnesses except Majutu’s own workers.

    Yokoyadi was arrested. Remanded. The State never filed proper committal papers. The case did not move.

    Eight years later.
    Majutu had erected a fence. He had built a guest house. He had planted eucalyptus where Yokoyadi’s father was buried.

    Yokoyadi had not seen a judge in five years. The file sat on Mulyanyama’s desk – a monument to a hoe that had become a life sentence.

    The Pastor’s Form – Eight Years

    Micaki was a widow. She could not read or write. She trusted people in uniforms – including Pastor Solomon, who ran a Pentecostal church in the trading centre.

    One afternoon, Pastor Ayak visited Micaki. He told her the government was giving free money to elderly vulnerable persons. He had a form. He just needed her thumbprint. She was grateful. She dipped her thumb in the stamp pad.

    Just as she was about to press it on the paper, her son Emmanuel walked in. He had returned from Lira for a visit. He saw the form. He yanked it from the pastor’s hand. He read it. It was not a government grant. It was a gift inter vivos – a transfer of ten acres to the pastor’s church foundation entirely for free!

    Emmanuel shouted. He demanded that the pastor leave. He chased him out of the compound. He did not touch him. He did not threaten his life. He simply raised his voice and pointed to the road.

    Two weeks later, a vagrant was found dead near the pastor’s church – a man known to drink at the local bar. Pastor Ayak went to the police. He told them Emmanuel had threatened him, that Emmanuel was violent, that Emmanuel must have killed the vagrant in a robbery.

    There was no evidence. No witness placed Emmanuel near the body. But the pastor was influential. His church had friends in the district. Emmanuel was arrested. Charged with murder. Capital offence. No bail.

    Eight years later.
    Pastor Ayak had built a primary school and a church on Micaki’s land. A banner read: “New Hope Pentecostal School – Transforming Lives.”

    Micaki sat on the roadside, watching children play where her cassava used to grow.

    Emmanuel had never been tried. The State had no witnesses. The file would not die.

    The Attempt

    Mulyanyama could not grant bail. He could not dismiss the charges. The law said he could only communicate the charges and call up the file for mention – to track the status of police inquiries or investigations. He could not provide any effective remedy for freedom – even though the law said every suspect was innocent until proven guilty or until conviction.

    He was not a magistrate. He was a warehouse for human beings.

    So he bundled the 100 files. He wrote a cover letter to the Resident Judge of the High Court Circuit. He asked for supervisory intervention. He personally drove the files to the High Court registry.

    A week later, his phone rang. He did not recognise the number. He answered.

    “Worship Mulyanyama.”

    The voice was tired. Not cruel. Tired.

    “This is the Resident Judge.”

    Mulyanyama straightened. “Good afternoon, my Lord.”

    “I am looking at your letter. The one about the committal files.”

    “Yes, my Lord. The accused have been on remand for eight years. The State has not filed commital papers. I cannot grant bail. I cannot dismiss the charges. I was hoping your Lordship could exercise supervisory –”

    The Judge cut him off.

    “I have murder sessions across four districts. I have bail applications from two prisons. I have a donor‑funded SGBV session starting next week. I do not have time for one hundred twenty one files that should have been dealt with at your level.”

    Mulyanyama: “With respect, my Lord, the law does not permit me to –”

    “Then the law is an ass.”

    Silence.

    “Listen to me, Worship. I am not your appeal court. I am not your clerk. Those files are your problem. Deal with them.”

    The line went dead.

    Mulyanyama stared at his phone. He understood now: the Judge was not cruel. He was simply drowning. And the 100 files were the first to sink.

    The Interns

    One afternoon, a group of internship students from Gulu University arrived at Omwonyo‑le. They were bright, eager, and armed with notebooks. Their supervisor had assigned them to sensitise remand inmates about their rights – the right to be presumed innocent, the right to legal representation, the right to a speedy trial.

    Mulyanyama allowed it. He had no power to refuse. He also had no power to help.

    The students sat with Yokoyadi. They explained Article 28 of the Constitution. They spoke of bail, of committal, of the State’s duty to file papers.

    Yokoyadi listened. Then he asked: “If all that is true, why have I been here eight years?” ,”Is there anything you can do to assist me?“

    The students had no answer. They were not qualified advocates. The law did not permit them to file anything, to apply for anything, to demand anything. They could only teach rights – not enforce them.

    They visited Emmanuel. He did not speak. He stared at the wall. One student tried to hold his hand. He pulled away.

    That evening, the students sat outside the court, silent. Their supervisor told them: “You have seen the gap between the law on paper and the law in practice. Now you must decide if you still want to be lawyers.”

    Mulyanyama watched them leave. He thought of the innocence of these brilliant Bachelor of Laws Degree students and what the future of Law and Legal practice probably held in store for these “emiti emito”– Luganda, his mother tongue’s proverbial expression of “children”. He thought of the 100 accused persons who had appeared before him for periods ranging between 7 to 8 years.

    He did not write in his diary that night. There was nothing left to say.

    Before you ask why justice delays… ask these questions:

    How many Yokoyadis are waiting in your local prison – eight years, ten years, twelve? How many Emmanuels are on remand because a wealthy, influential, highly connected and malicious complainant whispered a lie? And why does the law still force a magistrate to hold a hearing that serves no purpose?

    Eight years is not a delay.
    Eight years is a sentence – served without conviction.

    Enen Ambrose. Advocate. Member: Judiciary Affairs Committee of Uganda Law Society.

    If you missed the start of this journey, you can catch up on the systemic breakdown of the Magistrates Courts in Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama — Episode 3

    Legal Disclaimer Fiction & Non-Defamation Notice:

    This post is a pure work of fiction and creative literature. The characters, dialogue, specific incidents, and settings—including the character of His Worship Mulyanyama and the location of Omwonyo-le Magistrates Court—are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance or exact matches to actual persons, living or dead, real-life judicial officers, or specific ongoing cases is entirely coincidental. This text is created solely for the purpose of systemic legislative critique and systemic advocacy; it is not maliciously constructed, nor should it be interpreted as an attempt to defame, misrepresent, or malign any living individual or public office holder.

    The legal references in this Series is for information purposes only and is not intended to be used as a substitute for legal advice. The author does not assume responsibility or admit liability arising from the use of the contents of this blog as legal advice.

    The author strongly encourages readers to consult a licensed attorney for specific context related legal advice.

    JOIN THE UNDERGROUND AND FUEL THE MOVEMENT

    We have created a WhatsApp Channel. Don’t miss the latest updates, get early bird access to our latest episodes and more, so much more. Click the following link to follow the Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb9BQqw5a246bWVsLl3j

    Independent institutional critique and advocacy for a radical overhaul of legal culture require time, deep research, and uncompromised independence. If these narratives bring value to your legal journey or challenge your perspective, please visit our HOME PAGE to see how you can support this platform directly and keep the critique fierce and relentless.

    Enen Ambrose. Advocate & Founder–Enen Legal World

  • Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama — Episode 3

    Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama — Episode 3

    When “Just Cause” Entered the Registry

    Author’s Note: The Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama is a serialized literary commentary designed to constructively critique the institutional and structural implications of the Magistrates Courts (Amendment) Act, No. 6 of 2026. This work is a creative exploration of the human infrastructure behind public service and is not intended to ridicule, embarrass, or undermine the integrity of the Judiciary.

    The brown envelope had not lied.

    TRANSFER OF FILES – FOR JUST CAUSE.
    No explanation. No appeal. Just a signature from the Chief Magistrate and a list of file numbers.

    Among them: File No. 43. The twins fighting over cassava. Imat Nekolina’s envelope. Ocen Okello’s breach of contract case for the supply of beans to Kec Primary School.

    All of them, transferred. To whom? For what reason? The envelope did not say.

    Mulyanyama set the letter down. He did not call the Chief Magistrate. He simply stared at his phone.

    Counsel Ogwang Adede woke before sunrise.

    He had spent 200,000 shillings on fuel the previous evening – a calculated investment. Today, he would drive from Lira to Omwonyo‑le for Ocen Okello’s case. Four years of beans. Four years of adjournments. Today, he would close the defence under Order 17 Rule 4.

    He checked his phone.

    A message from the headmaster: “Fees balance remains. Your son cannot sit exams.”

    He silenced it. First, court. Then fees.

    Then he opened the Lira High Court WhatsApp group.

    NOTICE: The Honourable Judge will not sit this week. He has been deployed to Omwonyo‑le for a donor‑funded SGBV session. All matters stand adjourned.

    He refreshed. The Omwonyo‑le Magistrates Court group had a new notice:

    NOTICE: His Worship Mulyanyama has been designated Registrar for the forthcoming SGBV session. Additionally, a donor‑funded plea bargaining session will run for two weeks. No judicial officer will be at Omwonyo‑le during this period.

    He scrolled further.

    UPDATE: All other magistrates and the Registrar have travelled for a Judiciary conference. Only those excused for donor conditionalities remain in session.

    Counsel Ogwang Adede stared at the screen.

    In Lira – no Judge.
    In Omwonyo‑le – no Mulyanyama.
    No Magistrate. No Registrar. No court.
    Two weeks.

    He had spent 200,000 shillings on fuel. But that was not the worst of it.

    That morning, he had been expecting a deposit of 30,000,000 shillings in taxed costs from a judgment debtor – Okullo Aram. The matter was coming up for Notice to Show Cause before the Registrar of the High Court in Lira. Okullo had called last evening, panicking, begging not to be thrown into civil prison. He was prepared to deposit the money in front of the Registrar.

    Then Okullo sent a message: a photo of a notice from the Registrar’s chambers. The Registrar had travelled to Kampala overnight – for a donor‑funded workshop on case management.

    After sending the notice, Okullo’s phone went silent.

    Counsel Ogwang Adede called back. Twice. Three times. Nothing.

    Later, he learned that Okullo Aram had five children in university and three in secondary school. The money that was meant for taxed costs had been redirected – to tuition fees, to accommodation, to books.

    The debtor had not fled. He had simply reprioritised. And the law could not touch him – because the Registrar was not there to hear the Notice to Show Cause.

    His clerk’s salary would wait.
    His legal assistant’s salary would wait.
    The headmaster’s message about his son’s exams would not wait.

    Then his firm WhatsApp group buzzed.

    A calling letter. From His Worship Munyakuzi, Chief Magistrate of Oneka Iden – the Chief Magisterial area under which Omwonyo‑le fell.

    TRANSFER OF FILE – FOR JUST CAUSE.
    On the court’s own motion, Ocen Okello’s case is transferred to my court for hearing.

    No application from any party. No consent. No explanation.
    Just just cause.

    Counsel read it twice. His hands did not shake. They had done this before.

    Mulyanyama had also seen the letter.

    He picked up his phone and called Munyakuzi.

    “Sir, with respect… those are live matters. Judicial independence –”

    A pause. Then Munyakuzi laughed.

    “Worship, did you not read Section 217A of the amendment? I have powers to transfer those files to my Court.”

    The line went dead.

    Mulyanyama stared at his phone. The ground at Omwonyo‑le had swallowed an axe. Now the law was swallowing itself.

    Ocen Okello did not learn about the transfer from a noticeboard.

    He learned it from Alyek Molly.

    He had not even reached the bank. His Boxer motorcycle was still coughing dust somewhere between Abako and Oneka Iden when his phone vibrated.

    He smiled when he saw the name. Alyek Molly – Registry. He answered immediately.

    “My daughter… how is today?”

    For a second, Alyek said nothing. Then her voice came – soft, tired, almost apologetic.

    “Mzee… don’t come to court.”

    Silence.

    “I have already told your lawyer.”

    Ocen slowed the motorcycle. “What now?”

    Alyek looked through the registry window before answering. “His Worship has two critical assignments.” She lowered her voice. “He has been designated Registrar for the SGBV session… and after that… another plea bargain project. Two hundred files. Fifteen days.”

    Ocen said nothing.

    Alyek swallowed. “Mzee… save your fuel.”

    The line went dead.

    Forty minutes later, Ocen Okello sat inside the office of the loan officer.

    Tie. Ledger. Calculator. No smile.

    The file marked MORTGAGE RECOVERY – FINAL NOTICE lay open on the desk.

    Ocen removed his cap. Held it in both hands. And began pleading.

    “Sir… please do not sell my house.”

    He swallowed. “The case is very near judgment, I promise.”

    The loan officer said nothing. So Ocen continued.

    “My lawyer says… no more than one month.”

    He pointed weakly toward Omwonyo‑le. “The court has some delays… delays I do not fully understand… delays I cannot even explain properly…”

    Just then – his phone vibrated again.

    This time, Counsel Ogwang Adede.

    He opened the message.

    Brown envelope. Three words.

    TRANSFERRED FOR JUST CAUSE.

    Ocen read it once. Read it twice. Then slowly looked back at the loan officer… and for the first time in four years… did not know which debt was more dangerous – the one inside the bank, or the one inside the court.

    By lunchtime, Omwonyo‑le was already whispering.

    The new Chairperson of the School Management Committee of Kec Primary School – the same school that had eaten Ocen Okello’s beans – was an old boy of Chief Magistrate Munyakuzi.

    In Omwonyo‑le, rumours travelled faster than judgments.
    And this rumour had teeth.

    “He is willing to vouch for his old buddy,” Alyek Molly heard from a clerk in Oneka Iden. “To save the school from an old crippling debt.”

    Alyek said nothing. She was still calculating her mother’s medication. Friday’s tuition. The per diem that would now not come.

    That evening, Mulyanyama sat in his rented room above the pharmacy in Oneka Iden.

    The brown envelope still lay on the table.
    Open. Unfolded. Unanswered.

    The names stared back at him.
    Imat Nekolina. Ocen Okello.
    Four years. Red ribbons. Borrowed fuel. Dead witnesses.
    Transferred. For just cause.

    His phone vibrated.
    Counsel Ogwang Adede.

    Mulyanyama stared at the screen for two rings. Then answered.

    No greetings. Just breathing.

    Then Counsel spoke.

    “Worship… what is going on?”

    Silence.

    “What happened?”

    Another silence. Then the question that hit harder than any objection ever raised in court:

    “Who complained?”

    Mulyanyama looked again at the brown envelope. Then at the ceiling. Then finally spoke. Quietly. Almost apologetically.

    “Counsel… I honestly have no idea.”

    A pause. Then –

    “Just orders from above.”

    Neither man spoke again. For a few seconds, all that remained between lawyer and magistrate was breathing.

    Then the line went dead.

    And for the first time since the amendment, His Worship Mulyanyama realised something far more dangerous than corruption:

    Sometimes a file is not stolen. Sometimes… it is simply called upward.

    Before you blame a magistrate for “delayed justice”… ask two questions:

    Who funded the last special session in your court? And how many times has a file been transferred – without your consent – “for just cause”?

    The system is not broken.
    The system is fully booked.

    Enen Ambrose

    Advocate

    Member: Judiciary Affairs Committee

    Uganda Law Society,

    For feedback or comments: enen@enenlegalworld.com

    If you missed the start of this journey, you can catch up on the systemic breakdown of the Magistrates Courts in Chronicles of His Worship Mulyanyama — Episode 2

    Legal Disclaimer Fiction & Non-Defamation Notice:

    This post is a pure work of fiction and creative literature. The characters, dialogue, specific incidents, and settings—including the character of His Worship Mulyanyama and the location of Omwonyo-le Magistrates Court—are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance or exact matches to actual persons, living or dead, real-life judicial officers, or specific ongoing cases is entirely coincidental. This text is created solely for the purpose of systemic legislative critique and systemic advocacy; it is not maliciously constructed, nor should it be interpreted as an attempt to defame, misrepresent, or malign any living individual or public office holder.

    The legal references in this Series is for information purposes only and is not intended to be used as a substitute for legal advice. The author does not assume responsibility or admit liability arising from the use of the contents of this blog as legal advice.

    The author strongly encourages readers to consult a licensed attorney for specific context related legal advice.

    FUEL THE MOVEMENT

    Independent institutional critique and advocacy for a radical overhaul of legal culture require time, deep research, and uncompromised independence. If these narratives bring value to your legal journey or challenge your perspective, please visit our HOME PAGE to see how you can support this platform directly and keep the critique fierce and relentless.

    Enen Ambrose. Advocate & Founder–Enen Legal World

  • Of Gold, Dairy, and Slow Poison: Elison Karuhanga and the Perils of Development Without Accountability

    Of Gold, Dairy, and Slow Poison: Elison Karuhanga and the Perils of Development Without Accountability

    Enen Legal World Logo

    There is a seductive danger in confusing development with institutional health.

    Yes, Uganda has grown sectors.
    Yes, milk production rose.
    Yes, roads were built.
    Yes, factories emerged.

    Let us even grant these achievements at their most generous interpretation, though many of the surrounding statistics and political narratives remain fiercely contested. The deeper question lies elsewhere.

    Ancient empires also built roads.

    The question is whether those roads outlasted the emperor, and in more recent history, whether the institutions managing them answered to citizens or merely to the political survival of one man.”

    That is where Elison Karuhanga’s argument becomes deeply troubling.

    Not because it defends industrialisation. Industrialisation is necessary.

    But because it quietly asks Ugandans to romanticise concentrated power itself.

    The article repeatedly frames scepticism toward entrenched political authority as elite cynicism, as though accountability were merely an inconvenience imposed by intellectual spectators standing outside history.

    Yet history teaches something far less flattering.

    Apartheid South Africa built one of the continent’s most sophisticated industrial economies. Gaddafi’s Libya produced impressive welfare indicators and modern infrastructure. Mobutu’s Zaire cultivated the imagery of national grandeur and developmental ambition.

    Yet history eventually exposed the same weakness in each case: institutions had become subordinate to personalities, patronage, or exclusionary systems of power.

    Infrastructure is not self-validating.

    The real question is never whether factories, highways, dams, or industrial parks exist. The deeper question is whether the institutions beneath those projects remain independent enough to survive the men who built them.

    Development without accountability does not eliminate instability.

    It postpones it.

    And when accountability weakens long enough, entitlement emerges. From entitlement comes impunity. And from impunity comes institutional decay.

    That is precisely the warning at the heart of Mahmood Mamdani’s 2025 book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State. Mamdani’s argument is not that Uganda failed because it lacked projects or economic ambition. It is that the post-independence dream was gradually dismantled through tribalised politics, institutional corrosion, political violence, and the fragmentation of citizenship itself.

    A country may increase exports while weakening citizenship.

    That is not transformation.

    That is deferred fragility.

    And perhaps nowhere is this contradiction more revealing than within the intellectual class now defending presidential mythology in the name of developmental realism.

    Many of us were repeatedly lectured about the supposed “neutrality” of the Uganda Law Society whenever lawyers confronted excesses of state power. We were told institutions must remain above politics.

    Yet neutrality now appears remarkably flexible when the task is constructing emotional narratives around presidential permanence and historical indispensability.

    One begins to suspect that neutrality was never truly about insulating institutions from politics, but about regulating the direction in which criticism could travel.

    That selective application is itself part of the institutional decay being ignored.

    When institutions of accountability suspend their scepticism in order to celebrate power, they accelerate the very “slow poison” they should be resisting.

    And this is why the romantic language of “stubborn men who shape history” should concern us more than inspire us.

    History is full of stubborn men.

    Some built nations.

    Others merely built systems too personalised to survive them.

    Uganda’s tragedy has never been a shortage of ambitious rulers.

    It has been the absence of institutions strong enough to survive them, and disciplined enough to tell them no.

    And if we are to have the rule of law rather than the rule of men with a gun, a Bible, and a pen, then a few stubborn men and women must demand that development be built on accountability, not just the romanticisation of power.

    The roots of accountability are bitter, but the fruits are sweet.

    This, fellow countrymen and women, is my contribution to that cause.

    Enen Ambrose.

    Advocate. 

    For feedback or comments: enen@enenlegalworld.com

  • THE QUIET VIOLENCE OF PROCEDURE II: When Courts Resist Communication in the Age of E-Justice, A Reflection on Bakampa Brian Baryaguma v Bbaaka Property Consultants (U) Ltd

    THE QUIET VIOLENCE OF PROCEDURE II: When Courts Resist Communication in the Age of E-Justice, A Reflection on Bakampa Brian Baryaguma v Bbaaka Property Consultants (U) Ltd

    Enen Legal World Logo


    There is another kind of quiet violence in procedure.

    Not when the law assumes communication where none exists.
    But when communication eventually occurs, and the law still struggles to recognise its procedural legitimacy because it arrived through unfamiliar technological form.

    Days ago, in my earlier critique, The Quiet Violence of Procedure: When Digital Service Serves No One, I warned against a growing procedural danger within Uganda’s evolving E‑Justice architecture. I argued that a notice uploaded into ECCMIS is not necessarily a notice received; that “deemed service” is not always effective service; and that digital systems may satisfy procedural form while silently excluding the very litigants whose rights stand at risk.

    The concern then was technological presumption.

    This time, the concern is technological distrust.


    The Case and Its Difficulties

    In Bakampa Brian Baryaguma v Bbaaka Property Consultants (U) Ltd (Misc. Cause No. 0033 of 2023, 22 May 2026), the High Court held that service through WhatsApp, without prior leave for substituted service, was improper. The Applicant, self‑represented, sent the application to the Respondent company director’s WhatsApp number on 24 February 2023. The director only saw the message weeks later, on 4 April 2023, before instructing counsel who filed a response on behalf of the company.

    The Court struck out the affidavit of service, holding that the Applicant was not authorised to effect service under Order 5 rule 7 of the Civil Procedure Rules and had not first obtained leave for substituted service. The Court further struck out the Applicant’s supporting affidavit for being argumentative and containing matters of law (contrary to Order 19 rule 3 CPR), and dismissed the application with costs.

    A copy of the decision can be downloaded below:

    Bakampa Brian Baryaguma v Bbaaka Property Consultants (U) Ltd 2026 UGHCCD 154 (22 May 2026)Download


    I do not defend every aspect of the Applicant’s filings. The supporting affidavit may well have been defective under Order 19. The Applicant also admittedly did not first attempt conventional corporate service under Order 29 rule 2 CPR, nor did he obtain prior leave before resorting to WhatsApp. Those are genuine procedural weaknesses.

    But this reflection is not about the affidavit ruling. It is about the service holding – and the deeper jurisprudential questions it raises for Uganda’s digital transformation. I earlier posed the question “Uganda’s Courts are going paperless, the only question left is…are you?“

    I raised a critical concern about the preparedness of lawyers for paperless transition come June 2026. This blog inverses that question back to the courts themselves. With a ruling which effectively rolls back all the gains in the courts’ E-justice and digital transformation journey, I equally ask, “are our courts really ready for a fair, meaningful and realistic digital transformation?“


    The Conceptual Problem

    The real issue is not whether procedural safeguards around electronic service should exist.
    The question is: should courts continue treating direct electronic communication as inherently inferior to conventional physical service, even where actual notice is eventually achieved and no prejudice is demonstrated?

    Historically, substituted service existed because direct communication with a litigant had become impossible, impracticable, or evasive. Newspaper advertisements, affixing summons to premises, or leaving documents with third parties were indirect approximations designed to create the possibility of awareness where direct access could not be achieved.

    WhatsApp communication to a litigant’s verified personal number occupies a very different space.

    It is direct. It is individualised. It is traceable. And in many modern contexts, it may be more personal than conventional physical service itself.

    Traditionally, courts have accepted service where documents are left with receptionists, secretaries, guards, clerks, or relatives – all based on the assumption that the communication will eventually reach the intended recipient. A WhatsApp message arrives directly on the litigant’s personal handset, often with timestamps, delivery indicators, and sometimes read receipts.

    Ironically, historically accepted physical substituted service may sometimes be less direct than modern electronic communication.

    That forces an uncomfortable question:
    In the smartphone era, why should communication sent directly to a litigant’s verified personal number automatically be treated as procedurally inferior to leaving papers with a receptionist, such that prior leave for substituted service is required?”

    The Delay Problem – And Why It Is Not Decisive

    Of course, the facts of this case reveal an important caution. The Respondent director did not see the message immediately. Weeks passed before the communication came to his attention. That delay cannot simply be ignored.

    But the existence of delay does not necessarily establish that the medium itself was defective.

    Physical summons may equally sit unread on office desks for weeks. Letters may remain unopened. Receptionists may misplace documents. The proper procedural inquiry cannot merely be whether awareness occurred instantly, but whether the chosen method was reasonably calculated to bring the proceedings to the attention of the affected party.

    Here, the communication eventually did exactly that.
    The Respondent became aware. Counsel was instructed. An affidavit in reply was filed. Participation followed.

    Which raises another important constitutional question: What actual prejudice was ultimately suffered?

    That question becomes particularly pressing under Article 126(2)(e) of the Constitution, which requires courts to administer substantive justice without undue regard to technicalities – especially where the litigant is self‑represented and navigating complex procedural terrain without legal assistance.

    Even if the Court was correct that service was technically defective, one may still ask whether striking out the affidavit of service, striking out the supporting affidavit, and dismissing the entire application with costs was proportionate. Could the Court instead have directed proper service and allowed rectification, particularly in a human rights enforcement application?

    Uganda’s Own Jurisprudence Already Points Forward

    Long before this dispute arose, Uganda had already begun integrating technology into adjudication. The Constitution (Integration of ICT into the Adjudication Processes for Courts of Judicature) (Practice) Directions, 2019 encouraged the use of technology to improve efficiency and expedition. The Judiciary’s ongoing embrace of ECCMIS, electronic filing, virtual hearings, and paperless procedure reflects an unmistakable institutional movement toward digitally facilitated justice.

    More importantly, Ugandan jurisprudence has already recognised technologically facilitated service itself.

    In Male H Mabirizi K. Kiwanuka v Attorney General, Justice Ssekaana Musa expressly acknowledged that service through “email or facebook or whatsApp or any other technologically advanced means” are methods calculated at bringing proceedings to the attention of parties. The Court further recognised that personal service is required only “wherever practicable” before concluding that service was effective because participation followed.

    A copy of that decision can be accessed below:

    Male Mabilizi v Attorney General (Miscellaneous Application No 918 of 2021) 2022 UGHCCD 50 (27 January 2022)Download


    That reasoning shifts procedural legitimacy away from ceremonial delivery and toward communicative effectiveness.

    And that is where the Bakampa ruling becomes difficult to reconcile with the Judiciary’s broader digital trajectory.

    A Concrete Way Forward

    What is needed is not a revolution, but a practice direction.

    The Chief Justice should issue guidance clarifying that electronic service via WhatsApp, SMS, or similar direct messaging platforms – when sent to a verified number and followed by reasonable confirmation (such as a follow‑up call or text) – may be recognised as valid service without prior leave, provided that:

    · The sender proves actual notice (e.g., delivery receipt, screenshot, or acknowledgment);
    · No prejudice is caused to the recipient (e.g., sufficient time to respond);
    · The court retains power to set aside service if injustice is shown.

    This would bring Uganda’s procedural law into alignment with its own constitutional commitment to substantive justice and its declared embrace of digital transformation.


    Conclusion

    Uganda’s courts now stand between two procedural imaginations. One remains rooted in paper legitimacy and inherited analog assumptions. The other recognises that constitutional fairness depends not on the medium, but on whether proceedings actually come to the attention of the affected party.

    That tension is no longer merely technological. It is jurisprudential.

    In Geoffrey Gatete & Another v William Kyobe, the Supreme Court distinguished between “deemed service” and “effective service,” warning that procedural law may presume notice without proving actual awareness. The Bakampa difficulty inverts that concern: awareness eventually existed, participation followed, yet the communication remained procedurally suspect because it arrived through a medium still viewed with doctrinal caution.

    This is not an argument against procedural safeguards.
    It is an argument for procedural realism in the age of digital justice.

    Because justice does not only fail when communication never reaches.
    Sometimes, it also falters when the law hesitates to recognise communication after it has already arrived.

    DISCLAIMERS:

    This blog is not an attack on the Learned Judge in the Bakampa decision.  It is fair commentary intended to foster a discussion and self reflection on the Judiciary’s forthcoming paperless transition to fully digital courts, for E-justice and digital transformation must serve justice rather than suffocate or truncate it.

    This blog is not intended to be used as a substitute for legal advice. The author accepts no liability or responsibility for any losses that arise from use of information as legal advice. Readers are encouraged to consult a licensed attorney of their choice for situation specific  legal advice.

    Enen Ambrose
    Member, Judiciary Affairs Committee, Uganda Law Society.

    For comments or feedback, write to: enen@enenlegalworld.com 

  • EPISODE 2: CHRONICLES OF ABONGODERO VILLAGE, THE CONSTITUTIONAL GRANARY.

    EPISODE 2: CHRONICLES OF ABONGODERO VILLAGE, THE CONSTITUTIONAL GRANARY.

    Enen Legal World Logo


    If you are joining us for the first time: In Episode 1, we visited Abongodero, the village named after Mzee Zakayo’s ingenuity. Zakayo never built a granary. He traded cattle for the harvest of others. His son, Okello Anyapo, inherited land but not discipline. When hunger came, his uncle Owera Apur, the only farmer who actually built, opened his granary to him. No rules. Just access. Okello emptied it, smiled, and said: “You allowed me. I merely accessed.” The proverb, which came from the lesson which Abongodero learnt from Okello Anyapo still echoes: You never send a starving man to the granary.

    NOW LIFT YOUR EYES FROM THE VILLAGE.

    In 1995, Uganda built a granary.

    It was called the Constitution. The Constituent Assembly, our Owera, sweated over it. They filled it with grains, cereals and legumes: independence, fairness, accountability, public trust. They stored enough justice to last generations.

    Then they handed the keys to Parliament and said:

    “Guard this. Build walls around it. Regulate who enters, who eats, who guards. Pass laws to guide the President and the Judicial Service Commission in appointing, disciplining, and removing judicial officers.“

    That was the command. Clear. Deliberate. Unambiguous, store the nation’s granary of justice to feed generations and posterity. 

    For thirty years, Parliament has done what the villagers of Abongodero did.

    They admired the granary.

    They walked around it. They named committees after it. They photocopied the Constitution into the Judicial Service Commission Act, sprinkled it with procedure, some insidous confidentiality and went home. They called that a good day’s job and pocketed fat salaries for dereliction of duty.

    They left the rest to the Commission.


    And what is this Commission?

    A body composed largely of insiders. Judges. Judicial actors. The Attorney General, the government’s chief defender, seated comfortably in a structure that decides the fate of judges who sometimes rule against his own client.

    It is as if Owera had not only handed Anyapo the keys, but appointed Anyapo’s hungriest siblings as the oversight committee to stop him from collecting excessive grains from the granary.

    Friends regulating friends.

    Parliament granted access. Parliament abandoned responsibility.

    And Okello entered.

    BEHOLD THE SEVEN FAMINES

    1. The Shs 763 Billion “Justice Tax”

    The Inspectorate of Government’s 2021 “Cost of Corruption” report estimated that Ugandan court users paid Shs 763 billion in bribes—43% of the 2019 justice sector budget.

    Why?

    Because Parliament never built the walls. The 2025 Regulations ensure that bribery does not lead to a judicial officer’s automatic removal. It whispers. It negotiates. It retires quietly with benefits.

    At any judiciary function, you will hear rhetorical sloganeering about zero tolerance to corruption.  The truth is the leadership and the whole institution preaches water and drinks wine. The structure of the Judicial Service Regulations, 2025 creates elite favors for the Judge, Registrars and the Magistrates.


    We hunt “small thieves” in the civil service while the gatekeepers negotiate their exit through cabalist legislation.

    2. The Incompetence Shield

    A High Court judge can be removed for incompetence.

    But for magistrates, the men and women deciding the everyday fate of boda riders, widows, and shopkeepers, incompetence does not lead to automatic removal. Parliament has allowed a regime where the “big fish” are fired for failing, but the “small sharks” are legally protected and recycled.

    Why are judicial officers more “special” than nurses, teachers, engineers or lawyers in the civil service or private sector who are fired the moment they prove incompetent?

    Because Parliament never built the walls.

    3. The “Two-Man” Recruitment Cartel

    Parliament’s silence allowed the Judicial Service Commission to create committees where the quorum is a mere two people, less than 50% of the committee.

    The entire future of Uganda’s Bench can now be decided by two individuals in a private room, bypassing the multi-stakeholder wisdom the Constitution mandates.

    Two people.

    Deciding who judges you.

    And Parliament watches.

    4. The Executive “Pocket Veto”

    Under Section 13(6) of the Act, no judge can be disciplined unless the Attorney General, the government’s own lawyer, is physically present.

    By simply not showing up, the Executive holds a de facto veto over judicial accountability.

    The government’s defender decides whether the judges who rule against the government face discipline.

    You do not need a law degree to smell this rot.

    5. Criminalizing Transparency

    Instead of “open justice,” Parliament enacted Sections 17 and 23, making it a criminal offense to disclose Judicial Service Commission records without permission.

    They didn’t just fail to build the granary.

    They made it a crime to look inside and see what is being stolen.

    6. The “Non-Accountable” Ghost Tier

    By failing to define “Judicial Officer” properly, the law creates a phantom tier of Registrars, Deputy Registrars, Assistant Registrars, Chief Magistrates and Tribunal actors who exercise power over citizens but are legally insulated from oversight.

    They have the power of a judge.

    They have the accountability of a ghost.

    7. The Commission That Judges Itself

    The Judicial Service Commission receives complaints. Investigates them. Prosecutes them. Hears them. Decides them.

    Investigator. Prosecutor. Judge. Jury.

    All in one hut.

    We are warned about such concentration of power. But warnings without legislative correction are like a quarrel of drunkards at the village square.

    Parliament heard the warning.

    Parliament did nothing.

    AND WHEN THE VILLAGERS COMPLAINED…

    When the Uganda Law Society, noisy, stubborn, unapologetic  and unyielding, attempted to intervene?

    Injunctions.
    Uncause-listed petitions.
    Elections stalled.
    Appointments to the Judiciary proceeded like wedding ceremonies that will not wait for objections.

    The granary was gutted politely.

    “SHUT UP! YOU ARE GIVING US TRAUMA”

    At the 2026 New Law Year, Chief Justice Flavian Zeija warned that social media attacks on judges would not be tolerated. Online criticism, he said, causes trauma and will be crushed.

    Trauma from tweets?

    Try the trauma of five years on remand while your case gathers dust.
    Try the trauma of losing ancestral land because you cannot afford a surveyor.
    Try the trauma of watching a bribe walk free while your child rots in detention.

    The Uganda Law Society replied, correctly, that scrutiny is constitutional oxygen.

    But the Chief Justice’s instinct was not an accident.

    It was Okello Anyapo protesting demands for answers when Uncle Apur required answers for the granary that was depleted because he gave access without regulation. He permitted Anyapo to eat without brakes.

    Because the elders of Abongodero reminded Apur that the roots of accountability are bitter but the fruits are sweet!.

    [End of Episode 2]

  • EPISODE 1: THE LEGEND OF ABONGODERO

    EPISODE 1: THE LEGEND OF ABONGODERO

    Enen Legal World Logo


    There is a village called Abongodero. Abongodero means without a granary.

    The villagers named it after Mzee Zakayo’s ingenuity.

    Zakayo was clever. He never built a granary of his own. Instead, he raised cattle, fat bulls, glossy heifers. When hunger season approached, he would walk to a farmer whose granaries groaned with millet and offer a bull in exchange for rights to a certain number of storehouses. Enough to feed his household. Enough to impress the neighbors.

    The arrangement was sealed with a handshake. Everyone knew Zakayo’s cattle. Everyone knew he paid.

    The villagers admired him.

    “..Look at Zakayo!..”they whispered around evening fires. “He eats from granaries he never built!“

    They admired him so much that they named the village after his ingenuity.

    Abongodero.

    A photo of a granary.  Credit. Uganda Today: from article: A testament to tradition: the art of grain in Uganda’s homesteads by Chris Kato.

    But abundance has a wicked sense of humor.

    Zakayo’s children grew up knowing which families owed them food, which granaries bore their father’s mark. They inherited cattle, but not discipline. They inherited the right to eat, but not the wisdom to plant.

    One of them was Okello Anyapo.

    Anyapo. The lazy one.

    Okello inherited land so fertile it blushed when rain touched it. Black soil. Generous soil. Soil that would have yielded harvests his grandfather never imagined.

    But his hoe remained smooth. His fields grew weeds tall enough to vote.

    When hunger came, Okello blamed the sun for burning too bright. He blamed the rain for falling too hard. He blamed the ancestors for not speaking loudly enough. He blamed everyone except his idle hands.

    Across the stream lived Owera Apur.

    Apur the Farmer.

    He did not give speeches about productivity. He simply woke before the rooster finished its gossip. He dug. He planted. He weeded. He waited. His granary stood behind his hut like a quiet monument to repetition.

    He had no cattle to trade. He had only his back, his hands, and his patience.

    His granary stood full.

    Proof that the land was never the problem.

    Then hunger came like a leopard.

    The families who once owed Zakayo’s children had rebuilt their stores. They no longer needed cattle. They needed their millet for themselves.

    Okello’s inheritance could not be traded for what no one would sell.

    Hunger clawed him thin.

    He crossed the stream.

    “Uncle,” he said. “We are blood. Remember Father Zakayo? The village bears witness to his name.”

    In Lango, dignity comes before shame. Owera sighed. He looked at his granary—full from seasons of sweat.

    He opened the door.

    “Enter,”he said. “Take what you need.”

    Not ownership. Not supervision. Not rules.

    Just access.

    Okello entered empty and emerged round.

    He returned the next day. And the next. Soon he stopped pretending to farm at all.

    Why sweat when sacks yawn open?
    Why ration when no one counts?
    Why plant when the granary door never closes?

    By planting season, Owera opened his store to prepare for the rains.

    It echoed like a drum.

    Empty.

    When confronted, Okello adjusted his waistband and smiled.

    “You allowed me.“
    “There were no rules.“
    “I merely accessed.”

    And that is how Abongodero learned what their ancestors should have known:

    You never send a starving man to the granary.

    [End of Episode 1]

    Stay tuned and on the look out for Episode 2 of the legend of Abongodero. 

  • The Philosophy of Insults: When Truth Becomes Fire and Tests Legitimacy”Enen’s Letter to the Radical New Bar and Every Citizen Who Still Dares to Speak

    The Philosophy of Insults: When Truth Becomes Fire and Tests Legitimacy”Enen’s Letter to the Radical New Bar and Every Citizen Who Still Dares to Speak

    Logo: Enen Legal World


    🪶 The Fable

    Deep within the Mambo Forest, the animal kingdom lived in awe of a single, dazzling truth: their ruler, Twon Gweno the cock, wore a crown of living fire. His comb was a legend, a crest of such vibrant crimson that the elders swore it was a fragment of the first sun. His morning crow was a decree:

    “Bow to my glory, and you will be spared my flame.”

    And so, the animals bowed. Fear made them pious; fear made the cock sovereign with unquestioned loyalty, respect and cooperation from the rest of the animal kingdom in that forest. It was a classic case of natural-born legitimacy; never really earned.

    One evening, a crisis struck. Ichuli, the fox, the sole specialist in lighting the communal fire, was away. The wood was piled, but the spark was missing. The night, cold and predatory, loomed.

    Odyek Odyek, the hyena, a friend to truth and enemy of pretence, stepped forward.

    “The solution is simple,” she said. “We bow to Ladit Twon Gweno’s crown of fire. I will sprint to his home and borrow a spark.”

    She took a tuft of the driest spear grass, the Obia and went to the cock’s compound. She found him in a deep, unconscious slumber. Without waking him, she gently pressed the grass to his legendary crown, waiting for the catch, the sizzle, the proof.

    The grass rested on the crown, as inert as if it had been placed on a cool stone. The legendary fire was a phantom.


    Odyek Odyek, the hyena returned to the gathering and dropped the cold, unburnt grass in the centre of the circle. No words were needed. The lie they had bowed to for generations unravelled in that silent moment.

    Power, and unearned but coerced legitimacy unmasked, bled its authority into the silent night.


    ⚖️ The Lesson

    Borrowed fire must warm the hearts of the people. When it no longer does, the borrower is called to account.


    So it is with the courts. The robe, the gavel, the summons, and the warrant are instruments loaned by the people. Article 126(1) of the Constitution does not sing an ornament; it issues a command:

    Judicial power is derived from the people and shall be exercised by the Courts in their name and in accordance with the law and their values, norms, and aspirations.


    🧱 The Three Pillars of Legitimacy

    Legitimacy; the respect of the people and their cooperation with the courts, is the covenant at the heart of that loan. It demands three sacramental elements:

    Reflection: Judicial power must reflect the values and aspirations of the people; not the insatiable appetite of a sophisticated elite for luxury or high life.

    Truth: Courts must administer justice in accordance with law and truth, not convenience or midnight deals.

    The Judicial Oath: The solemn undertaking before God to do justice to all manner of people without fear, favour, ill will or affection is no actor’s prayer; it is a chain of duty.


    Strip away any of these, and what remains is a gowned pretender, eloquent and majestic, perhaps, but hollow: a cock whose crown no longer burns.


    The Evidence of Decay

    For those who have seen:

    • Appeal files missing thirty-eight pages.

    • A High Court hearing conducted not in a public courtroom but secretly in a posh hotel in which 15 minutes out of those proceedings were conducted in the absence of the opposite party and the whole process bashed by the Court of Appeal for want of a fair hearing and lack of judicial accountability and transparency and thereby further exacerbating the already slim public trust in the Court system entirely

    • A lower bench judicial officer bashed; “I don’t want to see this rubbish here, take it back where it came from” when they had sought guidance over files of thousands of remand detainees who had clocked mandatory bail, over 5 years where the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution state attorneys appeared neither willing nor ready to commit them for trial in the High Court.

    • The poorest peasants completely blocked from accessing justice because the lower courts have received directives not to register and dispose of customary land disputes unless a surveyor had first rendered a preliminary survey report; peasants who have never heard of, met heard about or hired the services of a professional called a surveyor. They have to sell a chunk of land  to afford a surveyor to conduct a preliminary survey and get their case registered.

    • A National Bar Association President’s liberty preserving Application for stay of execution of a manifestly void Contempt of Court ruling take close to 9 months without disposal.  




    These are not footnotes; they are flesh-and-blood indictments.
    The 1995 Constitution’s promise of a speedy and fair hearing has become hot air—Kikwangala, Kichupuli, Kawani.



    🗣️ The Test — The Philosophy of Insults. Withdrawing legitimacy and requiring that it be earned back by fidelity to its 3 pillars.

    “To insult without malice but with evidence is to perform constitutional maintenance and maintain pure legitimacy.”



    Hence the philosophy of insults. This is not the petty malice of a tavern quarrel. It is a civic stress-test, a pressure gauge for legitimacy.

    It is the public’s cry:

    “GIVE US WHAT YOU OWE US.”


    We lent you power; we demand accountability in return.

    A people that cannot insult and mock power has already lost moral authority. The right to insult and offend the powerful is not a luxury, it is the citizen’s tool for testing whether the borrowed flame is real.


    📜 The Proof — The Jurisprudence of Defiance

    “Leaders should grow hard skins to bear.”
    “Power must endure insult to remain clean.”

    Uganda: When the Constitution Answered Back

    This philosophy is not just wisdom; it is the settled weight of law. Consider Andrew Mwenda, whose words rattled the Republic:


    This philosophy is not just wisdom; it is the settled weight of law. Consider Andrew Mwenda, whose words rattled the Republic:
    “You see these African Presidents. This man went to University, why can’t he
    behave like an educated person? Why does he behave like a villager?’

    Museveni can never intimidate me. He can only intimidate himself ……… the
    President is becoming more of a coward and every day importing cars that are
    armor plated and bullet proof and you know moving in tanks and mambas, you
    know hiding with a mountain of soldiers surrounding him, he thinks that, that
    is security. That is not security. That is cowardice”

    Actually Museveni’s days are numbered if he goes on a collision course with
    me.”

    You mismanaged Garang’s Security. Are you saying it is Monitor that caused
    the death of Garang or it is your own mismanagement? Garang’s security was
    put in danger by our own Government putting him first of all on a junk
    helicopter, second at night, third passing through Imatong Hills where Kony
    is ?……Are you aware that your Government killed Garang?”

    I can never withdraw it. Police call them, I would say the Government of
    Uganda, out of incompetence led to or caused the death of Garang”

    When the state reached for iron law and charged him with sedition, the Constitutional Court answered with freedom, declaring that people from all backgrounds enjoy equal rights of expression, polite or not.

    “……Our people express their thoughts differently depending on the environment of their birth, upbringing and education.

    While a child brought up in an elite and God fearing society may know how to address an elder or leader politely, his counterpart brought up in a slum environment may make annoying and impolite comments, honestly believing that, that is how to express him/herself.

    All these different categories of people in our society enjoy equal rights under the Constitution and the law. And they have equal political power of one vote each.Then came the killer line that buried sedition:

    “……During elections voters make very annoying and character assassinating remarks and yet in most cases false, and yet no prosecutions are preferred against them. The reason is because they have a right to criticize their leaders rightly or wrongly. The Court concluded “Leaders should grow hard skins to bear.”
    A copy of the judgment can be found here:

    Mwenda and Another v Attorney General 2010 UGCC 9 (25 August 2010)Download



    Burkina Faso: The Continental Echo

    In Burkina Faso, journalist Issa Konaté was jailed for calling a prosecutor “a criminal in a robe.” In his Words:

    “…….The Prosecutor of Faso is the godfather of bandits. He is the sponsor, the organizer, the leader of a vast network of counterfeiters and traffickers that he protects with his power and status.”
    This is a prosecutor who does not prosecute crime, he commands it. He is not a guardian of order but a godfather of disorder
    While honest citizens sleep in fear, the chief lawman of our nation sits in his office, dividing the spoils of crime with police officers and bankers
    He is not a magistrate; he is a criminal in a robe. A saboteur of justice…….”



    The African Court answered with thunder and reason. Custodial sentences for speech are a bludgeon against Democracy:
    “The Court is of the view that the violations of laws of freedom of speech and the press cannot be sanctioned by custodial sentences, without going contrary to the provisions of Articles 9 and 19 of the Charter”

    The Court pronounced itself on the role of public figures under scrutiny.

    “There is no doubt that a prosecutor is a public figure; as such he is more exposed than an ordinary individual and is subject to many and more severe criticisms. Given that, a higher degree of tolerance is expected of him”

    A copy of the judgment can be found here:

    Konate vs Bukina FasoDownload


    From this we learn that “Power must endure insult to remain clean.”


    🪶 The Heritage; The Lango Grammar of Reproof

    This civic logic is not foreign to us. In Lango, the sharp tongue has long done the work of reform.

    • “Ole yin ibedo dako dako”; “…..you man, you behave womanly…”. It is not cruelty. It is shock therapy for duty and clarion call for the family patriarch to “man up” and live up to his responsibilities to his family, to lead firmly, provide for it and protect it.

    • “Lango mito alek”; “…..Lango deserves a pestle…” A reminder that discipline is coming unless reform comes first and that it intact comes usually after enforced discipline.


    • “Kwany Ka Point” The Gen Z’s and Millenials have similarly curved their own wisdom, “pick only the point”: As plain and simple as that. Pick only the point, filter it from the insult.


    • “Ikok Ugali idogi.”  “…..You will cry with Ugali in your mouth. …”


    In the old rite of passage, a young man’s two upper incisors were pulled, and boiling herbal Ugali was placed in his mouth to ease the agony. He cried through the very remedy meant to heal. Reform rarely feels like mercy.

    So when the citizen mocks the powerful, the intention is not cruelty; it is Ugali in the mouth of power: a necessary sting, a painful antidote.

    The insult becomes a civic anaesthetic; searing, brutally  humiliating, but designed to cleanse and restore legitimacy

    Reform rarely feels like mercy.
    So when the citizen insults and mocks the powerful, the intention is not cruelty. It is Ugali in the mouth of power: a necessary sting, a painful antidote.


    🔥 The Repair — The Calculus of Force

    Public outrage, properly aimed, creates four fields of pressure that make corruption intolerable:

    1. Professional Ostracization: When integrity collapses, the social scaffolding of a career falls with it.


    2. Erosion of Authority: A judge who loses public confidence loses jurisdictional muscle and may in fact receive fewer to zero allocations of files to handle or minimal chances to be chosen to sit on a panel in the case of hearings in courts that are manned by more than one Judicial Officer.


    3. Legal and Institutional Siege: Scandal catalyses petitions, litigation, and oversight that eat at illegitimacy.


    4. Political Abandonment: The appointing power prefers a scapegoat to a scandal, forcing a “voluntary” exit.

    From this, we learn that insults are not instruments of mob rule; they are the social physics of accountability.Yet outrage alone is not reform. The sting must translate into architecture: cooling-off periods for judges, transparent appointments, and independent oversight with teeth. Shame, the direct consequence of insult, reveals the rot; law must excise it.


    ⚔️ The Awakening — The Price of Truth

    “The hyena who taught the village to see.”

    For too long, the Uganda Law Society was a sleeping giant while the temple burned. But the dry grass is now burning in Masaka.
    When the President of the Bar , the hyena who taught the village to see, lives in exile for refusing to apologise for truth, his banishment becomes the ultimate test.

    Isaac K Ssemakadde (SC) President of Uganda Law Society. Credit: Uganda Law Society Website.



    📜 The Counsel; A Call to the Bench and the People

    This is not an invitation to vulgarity for its own sake.
    Insult as a civic weapon must be wielded with evidence, not rumour; with satire steeped in fact, not malice.

    To the Judges:

    Grow the hard skins the Constitutional Court commanded you to have. Wear patience as armour, not menace. Treat insult as a thermometer, not as treason or contempt.

    When a citizen insults, ask: does this insult point to truth? If yes, answer in reason, remedy the wrong, and let the nation watch you Act. If not, let the insult fall like a pebble. The dignity and legitimacy of the bench is earned by magnanimity and the stoic creed of the 3 pillars of legitimacy namely Reflection (of law, values, norms and aspirations); Truth and by abiding by the Judicial Oath. It is not enforced by fury, bullying or jaling dissent.

    This doctrine requires courage from all sides. The Bar must be relentlessly courageous and fearless in its insult and ridicule while exacting in its ethics.

    The public must be loud and literate, hurl insults but bring evidence. Lawyers must translate courage into petitions, not merely WhatsApp gossip and tweets. The Legislature must codify protections for speech against disproportionate criminal sanction and the Judiciary must redicscover the humility of the oath, the most important leg of judicial legitimacy; to do justice without fear, favour, ill will or affection. 

    To

    the citizens: Wield the pen. Make the insult precise devastatingly; threads that link to missing pages, memes that reveal truth.


    🌞 The Benediction & Epilogue

    Lock and Roseau taught and we learnt from the social contract doctrine that all power, judicial power inclusive, like the communal bull, is never owned. It is loaned to serve, not to feast upon. Judicial officers are, therefore, commissioners, agents of the people, not monarchs. The people are the principal. When the agent betrays, the principal must insult loudly in true reprimand.


    If those entrusted with it betray the trust, the people must remind them, sometimes with satire, sometimes with searing words, that borrowed fire must warm, not burn.

    This is neither an incitement to violence nor a call for insurrection. It is a call to civil carnage against corruption, ritualised, and peaceful.

    Let the insults be sharp, witty, and relentless, and let them dismantle rotten cartels of impunity.
    Turn every courtroom cover into a public syllabus: transparent reasons, readable judgments, accountability writ in footnotes and public records.
    Make the institutions bleed truth, not people.

    To end illiteracy in justice, let every citizen wield the pen.

    Let the hyenas come. Let the baraza be noisy.

    Let society test the crown every morning until the judges can point, with open hands and clear reasons, and say:

    “Here is the flame.”

    Until then, press the grass. Let the crown be tried in daylight.
    Let the fire prove itself true.

    ✍️ Dedication

    This blog is dedicated to all prisoners, present and past, of conscience, self-expression, and free speech: Male Mabirizi Kiwanuka, Ivan Samuel Sebadduka J, and Isaac K. Ssemakadde (SC), President of the Uganda Law Society, for executing a civic duty tragically confused with contempt of court.

    Contempt must be reserved for direct obstruction of justice, not as a cudgel to discipline ridicule.
    Imprisoning insult and mockery is to forget the nature and source of judicial power: the people’s consent.

    May the Good Lord bless and protect you all.
    And may we witness, in our lifetime, thick-skinned judicial officers who treat insults with nothing more than “a wry smile,”
    as aptly put twenty-five years ago by the eminent British jurist, Lord Justice Simon Brown.

    The author is a member of the inaugural Judiciary Affairs Committee of the Uganda Law Society.

    DISCLAIMER: This Blog is not a call for mob justice, chaos or disorder against our beloved holders of judicial power and other public power, it is brutal and defiant reminder that illegitimate conduct leads to a withdrawal of respect from the very owners of the power and attracts criminal and administrative sanctions, some as grave as removal from office. It is also to encourage the clean and disciplined judicial officers to continue upholding the consent of the people for them to administer justice by upholding the stoic pillars of legitimacy first mentioned in this Blog, and that with or without climbing the career ladder, God, the original designer of justice will be the ultimate one to reward their efforts both now and in the afterlife.

    This blog is not intended to be used as legal advice, and the author denies liability for use of the contents herein as legal advice. Readers are encouraged to consult a licensed Advocate to give them specialised advice and representation.

    For feedbacks and comments: ambrosenen@gmail.com. 

    References.

    For further reading or references. I consulted the following books.

    1. Politics as a Vocation (Politik als Beruf) by Max Weber

    2. Second Treatise of Government” by John Locke.

    3. The Social Contract” (Du contrat social) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

    4. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance” by James C. Scott.

    5. How to Do Things with Words” by J.L. Austin.

  • LET MY LAWYERS GO!, the National Legal Education Center Bill and the Independence Journey of Uganda’s Legal Profession.

    LET MY LAWYERS GO!, the National Legal Education Center Bill and the Independence Journey of Uganda’s Legal Profession.

    In Pharaoh’s Uganda, dreams bleed at the Law Development Centre’s gates. In 2024 alone, over 1,500 aspiring lawyers were barred from the Bar Course—a tenth plague, slaughtering futures.

    “The state’s iron whip chains.    lawyers to bake bricks for tyranny rather than wield shields for the people.”

    To the village Barraza, this is no mere law school tale. It is a war for justice: bills rise, warriors roar. Will the National Legal Examinations Centre Bill 2025 free Uganda’s advocates—or forge fresh shackles?

    The Brickyard of Colonial Chains

    Before independence, the British Pharaoh feared lawyers. In the 1940s, Apollo Milton Obote’s law scholarship was blocked; The British did not want him or someone from Lango to study law at the time. He later championed the struggle for Uganda’s independence alongside other nationalists like I.K Musaazi and Jolly Joe Kiwanuka, among others. The political Independence came in 1962, but lawyers remained baking bricks, facilitating dictatorship rather than defending rights.

    Image: Dr. Apollo Milton Obote. Former Primer Minister and first Executive President of Uganda.

    The 1956 Uganda Law Society,   Act, Cap 305, chained lawyers in Pharaoh’s brick yard, crushing their independence and autonomy by imposing state law officers, the Attorney General and Solicitor their governing council. This effectively led to state capture, aligning the legal profession with the colonial power’s interests instead of advancing the rights of the colonized peoples. The 1970 Advocates Act, Cap 295 further entrenched the chains: the Law Council, chaired by a judge who is appointed by the Attorney General after consultation with the Chief Justice. Other state law officers, the Solicitor General, a Chief Magistrate and only 3 lawyers, their president, and 2 others elected by them, a token of independence. Yet this substantially unelected group of powerful officials controlled eligibility, Bar exams, and disciplinary powers.

    The initial denial of Martha Karua a temporary license by the Ugandan Law Council and the reasons which it gave should tell you my dear reader everything else you need to know about the state of the independence of Uganda’s Legal Profession.

    Read more about it here.

    Reflections of the Uganda Law Council’s Refusal to License Martha Karua by Enen Ambrose at Enen Legal World.

    “Independence and autonomy for the lawyers remained but only a cruel mirage.”


    The Global Commandment: Let My Lawyers Go!

    In 1990, the UN Congress in Havana thundered: the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, echoing Exodus 5:1 “Let my lawyers go!” Principle 24 demanded self-governing, autonomous professional associations.

    The International Bar Association’s Standards echoed this, decreeing in Article 17 that lawyer associations must be independent, their councils freely chosen without state interference. Article 18 makes this crystal clear:

    “The functions of the appropriate lawyers’ association in ensuring the independence of the legal profession shall be inter alia: (h) to promote a high standard of legal education as a prerequisite for entry into the profession and the continuing education of lawyers, and to educate the public regarding the role of a Lawyers’ Association.”

    Again, to the village Barraza, let me break this down into what my “A” Level economics teacher, Mr. Stanley Lukera, taught us, the “grandmother’s approach”: the Uganda Law Society, whose leaders are elected by the members, the lawyers themselves, must be the body responsible for setting academic standards for entry into the legal profession. That means setting and/or advocating for high-quality law school curricula, Bar exam requirements, or other qualifications before one can serve as an advocate.

    Yet Uganda’s Pharaoh only sneered. The Law Council and ULS Act stood firm, chaining lawyers to state whims. The village Barraza waited for defenders, but lawyers, bound by Pharaoh’s overseers, could not rise.

    The People’s Covenant Ignored

    In 1995, Uganda’s people, the ultimate consumers of justice, struck a covenant in their Constitution. National Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy, Paragraphs II(vi) and V(ii)  XX declared that non-governmental bodies like the Uganda Law Society (ULS) must retain autonomy to champion human rights, their independence guaranteed by the state. Five years after the UN and IBA commandments, the people demanded their lawyers be freed to hold power accountable, to defend Mityana widows from land grabs, Soroti youths from unjust arrests, Mbale vendors from cheating landlords.

    But Pharaoh’s heart hardened, as in Exodus 8:15. The state clutched the legal profession tighter, wielding the Law Development Centre (LDC) as its slave-pit. With nearly 20 universities churning out law graduates, LDC remained the sole gatekeeper of the Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice, its infrastructure crumbling under the weight. Pre-entry exams, meant to manage capacity, became another lash, while quality control at universities was a paper tiger.

    Plagues of the Slave-Pit

    The LDC’s tyranny rained plagues on aspiring lawyers, not the state. Failure rates soared to 90% in 2021 and several other years. Dreams shattered like stolen straw. Sex-for-marks scandals led to the expulsion of Academic Registrar Everest Turyakihayo, in 2022; a stain on justice’s robe.

    Supplementary exam fees bled students, parents, guardians, spouses, boyfriends, and sugar daddies dry in millions of shillings for a second chance at Pharaoh’s mercy. Then came the tenth plague, the killing blow: in 2024, LDC barred over 1,500 qualified applicants from the Bar Course, admitting only 1,260 of 2,600, citing “limited resources”. Like the death of Egypt’s firstborn in Exodus 11:1-10, this was no mere setback; it was a massacre of futures, a cry that pierced the heavens.

    Yet some struck back. In 2017, Gulu and Cavendish graduates denied exams thumpchested and invited  Pharaoh to the wrestling ring in Asiimwe Alex Byaruhanga & 12 Ors v Law Council & 3 Ors. Justice Wolayo thundered:

    “Law Council’s block was arbitrary and irrational.”

    The court quashed the ban, imposed permanent injunctions, and awarded 20 million UGX each. This blog is dedicated to among others, these courageous lawyers who walked through Pharaoh’s furnace and are now fine practicing Advocates.

    Even public figures were not spared: Kyagulanyi Robert Ssentamu Alias Bobi Wine’s Cavendish University degree faced state scrutiny pre-graduation, proof Pharaoh’s heart hardens even against the popular. The musician turned leader of the National Unity Platform (NUP), Uganda’s largest opposition political party told members of the press shortly after his graduation that “When news came out that I was set to graduate, the usual detractors got busy and made every effort to stop me,” he said. “Some people, ostensibly working for the regime and other detractors, went as far as petitioning the National Council for Higher Education.” He added “NCHE officials went to the University and demanded for every document regarding my studies… It was a very detailed and intense investigation,


    Pharaoh’s Whip extends beyond Law, it bites real flesh.

    Pharaoh’s tyranny isn’t just legislative—it’s flesh and blood. At the 20th #RNBLive Series, Yours truly had the lived experience of delivering the speech of the ULS President Isaac K. Ssemakadde’s speech. A copy of that speech is attached and A video of it is also attached. The modern Aaron, spoke fire:

    “Advocate Abed Nasser Mudyobole… forcibly disappeared by state security. His abduction echoes the tyranny that hunted Njuba, Kayondo, Sebutozi, Ayigihugu. Lawyers who defend the Constitution, who question power, are enemies to be silenced.”

    Author delivering the speech of the ULS President Isaac K.  Ssemakadde on 29th May 2025 at the ULS House, Kampala.


    The courts shackle ULS blocking meetings (Kirima v ULS, 2024), Halting lawyers Constitutional voices at the Judicial Service Commission with appeals arising thereform under perpetual abeyance decisions (Mugisha v ULS), sentencing ULS President Isaac Ssemakadde in February, 2025 for criticizing a judge.


    Bakampa: Vision for Job-Ready Lawyers

    From LDC’s ashes rose Bakampa Brian Baryaguma. His Legal Education and Training Bill 2024:

    Decentralizes Bar training to universities

    Infuses practical skills: drafting, moots, clerkship

    Mandates one-year pupillage and national Bar exam

    Repeals the LDC Act

    “No more paying twice for one loaf. Lawyers ready to defend the people.”

    National Legal Examinations Centre Bill 2025: Red Sea or New Shackles?

    ULS President Isaac K. Ssemakadde, mirroring Moses and Aaron, long campaigned against LDC. He demanded that it be abolished way back in 2021 in his address to Law Students at Makerere University. In what appeared to be a fit of rage, LDC reacted by blocking Ssemakadde  on its X handle.

    When news broke out that Cabinet had drafted the National Legal Examinations Centre Bill, 2025, the Radical New Bar President asked on whether LDC will unblock him?

    Image: Isaac K. Ssemakadde asked if LDC would unblock him after the bill proposing its abolition as he had suggested was made public by the Solicitor General.  Credit, Isaac Ssemakadde’s X (formerly Twitter handle)

    The bill proposes to free the Post Graduate Bar Diploma in Legal Practice from LDC, and shut it down completely, but Pharaoh’s hand still grips:

    Attorney General, a cabinet minister and political appointee, appoints Director of the center on the recommendation of the governing council & the  chairperson of the governing Council itself (Clauses 17 and 8 respectively). This erodes the corporate governance principles in Clause 19 of the Bill.

    The Attorney General can remove council members, set rules, and determine fees for services of the centre

    The risk of elite and exclusionary political capture remains real. The ghosts of exorbitant fees, especially supplementary Examinations which sucked all stakeholders dry, should not be allowed to lurk after abolition of LDC.


    “The legal profession stands at the Red Sea. Will it walk through freely or be recaptured?”

    Call to Arms: Strike the Red Sea!

    To defend justice, rights, and the Rule of Law, the following MUST BE DONE NOW to prevent lawyers from being captured and tamed “young” and moulded into frightened cowards who cannot foster accountability.

    1. Let the ULS Command– ULS and not a state law officer should appoint the NLEC Director & Council.


    2. Skills Fuse – Bakampa’s model in university curricula: drafting, moots, clerkship. The doctors and engineers have proven that you don’t need to pay twice for the same loaf.


    3. Fees Free;  The Council should retain a higher autonomy to set fees and, in collaboration with ULS, set academic and examination criteria and standards

    A group of lawyers trained through fear, intimidation, and heavy involvement of state law officers loses the courage to fight for the Mityana widows, Soroti youths, and Mbale vendors: lawyers must rise bravely and fearlessly. The rule of law suffers gravely, and so does the effective functioning of the justice system as a whole. 

    Strike the Red Sea! Free ULS!  #LetMyLawyersGo

    “Pharaoh may harden his heart, but justice and truth can’t be enslaved forever.”

    You, dear reader, should participate heavily in freeing your rights defenders, call up the big people you know, Your area member of parliament, your Dean, faculty of Law, your ULS region’s Council member and demand that “they strike the Red Sea” and implement these recommendations so that your rights defenders, the lawyers gain full autonomy and independence.

    #Strike the Red Sea!

    #Let My Lawyers Go!

    This Blog is dedicated to the fearless champions of a better legal education and a better legal practice regulation in Uganda. Bakampa Brian Baryaguma,  the author of the Legal Education and Training Bill who personally granted me the copyrights to quote his works extensively. His journey in the struggle has been chronicle by him on his personal Blog at https://huntedthinker.blogspot.com/https://huntedthinker.blogspot.com/?m=1. I strongly encourage readers to visit his Blog and support his rallying call for members of the Public to contribute views on his bill which is attached:

    Legal Education and Training Bill, 2024 – Draft 3Download

    as well as the version presented by the cabinet, which is attached below:

    THE NATIONAL LEGAL EXAMINATIONS BILL, 2025 (1)Download

    President of Uganda Law Society, Isaac K. Ssemakadde for prophesying the eventual shut down of LDC,  being blocked by the same institution on X (formerly twitter), expelling the Attorney General and Solicitor General from the governing council of the ULS via RNB Executive Order No. 1 of 2024 and earlier on filing a Constitutional Petition, which canvases the international law framework that has been presented and is still pending judgment by the Constitutional Court. My personal prayers are with you as you endure the pain of self exile for tackling the challenges of the legal profession from the root cause. May the good Lord protect you and touch the justices of the Constitutional Court for a just decision.

    This blog is further dedicated to the lawyers who engaged the legal system in the journey to reform the legal system, namely Pius Nuwagaba, Asiimwe Alex Byaruhanga, and his 12 colleagues for challenging the Law Council head on. Your struggles curated this milestone and led the legal profession, especially intending Advocates to now arrive at the Red Sea, waiting to strike the waters to open up the sea, to cross and permanently ensure the independence and full autonomy of the Legal Profession.

    Finally, each and every lawyer, member of the public who added embers to the revolutionary fire to free the legal profession,  parents, Judges who rendered justice,  you all stood on the right side of history,  may God bless you.

    Enen Ambrose, the author, is an Advocate and member of the inaugural Judicial Affairs Committee of the Uganda Law Society.

    DISCLAIMERS!

    This blog is intended to spark discussions around the current National Legal Education Centre Bill 2025. References to individuals and institutions are based on publicly reported developments and not meant to attack individuals or institutions mentioned directly.

    Nothing in this Blog is intended for use as legal advice. Author accepts no liability for use of the contents herein as legal advice. Readers are advised to seek the services of a licensed Advocate for situation specific legal advice.

    For comments and feedback, reach to us at ambrosenen@gmail.com

  • ULS and UPC Under Siege: How Ssemakadde and Akena Are Battling the Slow Poison of Capture

    ULS and UPC Under Siege: How Ssemakadde and Akena Are Battling the Slow Poison of Capture


    Dusk cloaks a Ugandan village, the stew pot simmering under a mango tree, its steam weaving kin. Semaka, iron-fisted head of the home, strides in, his name a tremor, his spoon, greedy as a warlord’s blade, clinks against the pot, counting the meat, each jab a betrayal of trust. Jucupanti, rooted like a termite hill, stands as justice, her eyes kind yet fierce, her heart a scale balancing truth, her serenity Uganda’s beating root. Semaka’s meddling scars her, but her sons, barefoot, smoke-eyed fists like granite, rise to thrash the tyrant defiling their mother’s pot.

    Jimmy James Micheal Akena, Isaac Ssemakadde, and Denis Enap


    This is Uganda’s fight. The state is Semaka, its institutions, the pot, autonomy, the meat. Every clink is a power grab, every glance a wound to democracy’s soul. The sons, Uganda Law Society (ULS), Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), the people, are its watchdogs, their fury blazing in courtrooms, civil society, public town halls and digital shadows. Institutional autonomy, the heart of democracy, pulses in their defiance, guarding Jucupanti’s pot against Semaka’s claw.


    A Kampala courtroom crackles with treachery. Semaka’s chopping sticks yanked four critical ULS appeals from the Court of Appeal’s cause list for 10th July 2025. Semaka’s style and chopping sticks have no respect for decisional autonomy of the empanelled coram designated to hear those very appeals and the fact that causelisting them was already a Judicial Act which could not be reversed in a casual manner, administratively.

    The affected Appeals were:

    1. Civil Appeal No. 98 of 2025 ULS & Anor v Mugisha Hashim & 2 Ors.,

    2. Civil Appeal No. 99 of 2025 ULS & Anor v Phoena Nabasa Wall,

    3. Civil Appeal No. 102 of 2025 Isaac Ssemakadde v Mugisha Hashim, and;

    4. Civil Appeal No. 111 of 2025 ULS v Brian Kirima—chaining ULS’s nomination to the Judicial Service Commission, its President Isaac Ssemakadde’s liberty, and its democratic governance. On June 30, 2025, the Registrar de-cause-listed these appeals, citing non-mandatory conferencing, followed by indefinite delays on July 3. On July 7, the Deputy Chief Justice admitted directing the move, cloaking it in Article 21(1)’s equality while alleging baseless lobbying by ULS and prioritizing decade-old appeals. This is judicial capture—Semaka’s spoon stealing the meat, shielding Hon. Justice Musa Ssekaana’s rulings (himself now a Justice of Appeal) and defying Articles 28(1) (fair hearing), 128(1)-(2) (judicial independence), and 126(1) (public interest). The cases of the State of Utta Pradesh vs. Anup Singh and  Carltona Ltd vs Commissioner of Works [1943]2 ALLER  560 all stand shoulder to shoulder with the Uganda Law Society, buttressing its push back to protest the decause lisitng of the ULS Appeals as an erosion of the decisional autonomy and independence of the three justices before whom the appeals were scheduled to be heard. Of course, the ULS stood unbowed in its fight to yank Semaka’s schemes.

    What followed was three days of digital town halls on X, hosted by Alfred Muyaka, ULS Head of Communications Adam Nuwamanya, and the indomitable Leonard Egesa slamming the Judiciary for institutional capture of the ULS. The stakes were so high. In between the spaces were frantic legal and diplomatic efforts to restore the ULS Appeals to the cause list and when it became clear that the Deputy Chief Justice had refused to relent as he had earlier communicated, the ULS hurled, like a rocket launcher, an official boycott of the Hon. Chief Justice, Alfonse Owiny-Dollo’s thanksgiving prayer and feast in Patongo, Agago District.

    Ssemakadde’s voice, sharp as a spear, carved 17 truths, three of which yours truly brings to you in surmised form from The Observer (July 23, 2025): Patongo’s gifts—Shs 5m from an acting judge, Shs 3m from the Principal Judge—spit on the Leadership Code Act’s Shs 200,000 cap, (Sections 12(3) with a duty to report gifts in excess of the threshold to the Inspector General of Government (Section 12(4) and a duty to deposit the excess into the Consolidated fund, (Section 12(7))breeding corruption’s rot. The NRM National chairperson’s triumphalist presence (President Yoweri Tibahaburwa Museveni) while throwing jibes at the Democratic Party’s President and Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, Hon Nobert Mao for the destruction of the Democratic Party  and cloaked in secret donations, risks political capture, defying judicial neutrality (Principles 2.2, 4.4, 4.6, Judicial Conduct Code). The tax-fueled feast mocked Ugandans begging for justice in crumbling courts, crowning the judiciary elitist, not just.

    Ssemakadde’s roar is a son’s fist for Jucupanti’s honor, a war cry to seize the judiciary’s soul.
    The cry drifts to Kampala’s heart, where Uganda House, relic of Obote’s dreams, hums with defiance. Jimmy Akena, heir to that fire, sits, his face lit by a laptop’s glow. On July 26, 2025, police churn Kamdini’s dust, chasing a UPC National Delegates Conference that’s a ghost. The day before, Semaka’s shadow, wielding external forces bent on judicial capture, snatched an ex parte interim order—Joseph Pinytek Ochieno v Uganda People’s Congress and Jimmy Akena (Miscellaneous Application, unreported, 2025)—to halt it. Signed on a Saturday, it’s a phantom—ECCMIS, Uganda’s Electronic Court Case Management system, sleeps on weekends, servers dark as Technicians do routine maintenance, the interim order therefore unserved, a chief’s shout lost to the wind. Akena’s smirk splits the silence, fingers dancing on keys. In a Zoom call, ablaze with democratic will, 700 plus  delegates, from all corners of the Country, UPC’s supreme organ, log in, screens flickering defiance. Three bolts forge their triumph: the Constitution bends, rewriting power; presidential term limits vanish, freeing Akena; a 12-month extension seals his reign to lead a peaceful handover. The delegates suspend the three-month notice with a nod, asserting their autonomy over external shackles like the Denis Adim Enap v Uganda People’s Congress and Hon. Jimmy James Michael Akena (Miscellaneous Cause No. 148 of 2025) ruling, which sought to bury Akena’s presidency. Kamdini’s police find silence, a perfect decoy of the Sandhurst trained political strategist; the war burns on screens. Semaka’s paper tiger falls to UPC’s democratic lion.
    For the village bars and barazas: an unserved order is a shout in a storm—dead on the wind. UPC’s digital triumph, a son’s jab at Semaka, reclaims the meat for the party’s heart, outwitting NRM’s fear of Akena on the 2026 ballot. Courts may growl, but the delegates’ will, the soul of institutional autonomy, hums by every fire.
    That triumph’s shadow slithers to the NRM’s war rooms, where fear flickers like a dying lamp. A secret survey sears: Akena, the Northern spark, threatens their presidential dreams, needing more than 50% of the valid votes cast, as Uganda’s 1995 Constitution, Article 103(1), demands. The National Unity Platform’s Kyagulanyi Robert Ssentamu, the Fire Base Edutainment Ghetto Gladiator tunred politician,  popularly known by his stage name, Bobi Wine, locks Central and Eastern Uganda, as well as huge swathes of the Northern youth vote itself, forging a three-way clash: Museveni, Kyagulanyi, Akena. Jucupanti’s scales, the Constitution, gleam in the fray. Akena, ghost of Milton Obote’s legacy, kindles a Northern flame for a lost dawn. The Ochieno order was a desperate swipe by Semaka’s external forces to snuff it, fearing UPC’s best shot at state power. Semaka’s spoon clinks, seizing ULS cases, chasing UPC’s ghosts, clawing autonomy. But the sons—ULS, UPC, the civil society, and the people—stand fierce, eyes blazing for Jucupanti’s pot. The state’s tyranny weaves a noose, deaf to the Constitution’s call for fairness. The sons are done waiting.
    The fight surges to a village square, dusk heavy, the stew pot steaming. Semaka looms, his spoon a blade, scarring the soul. Jucupanti, justice’s heart, stands serene—eyes fierce, heart a scale, roots deep. Her sons, lion-hearted, rise like a savanna storm. The square pulses as ULS, UPC, the people charge, fists forged in ancestral fire. Semaka falls, his spoon shattering, the meat saved. Jucupanti’s smile is a sunrise, her pride a hearth’s glow. Semaka, humbled, bows, the family’s honour reborn. The pot is shared; trust the broth, freedom the spice, every Ugandan one. This is their democracy, Uganda’s heart, fierce with its watchdogs.
    UPC lit the way. Akena’s digital triumph, driven by the delegates’ supreme will, turned a court order to ash, saving the meat as Kamdini’s police chased ghosts, they brainlessly walked into the decoy. ULS, choked by lies, roars on. Ssemakadde, Jucupanti’s son, thunders on X, defying Patongo’s empty festivities. Lawyers, armed with truth and swagger, are poised to storm the gate, their constitutional petition challenging the de-cause-listing as judicial capture. If UPC’s delegates broke Semaka’s chains, ULS can crush his blade. The call blazes: ULS, all civil society, and the people wield the Constitution like a spear. Charge for Jucupanti’s pot, forge a nation free of shame. Autonomy thunders, and your triumph will light Uganda’s soul.

    DISCLAIMER!

    The views expressed in this Blog are public commentaries to spark crucial debates for reform. It is not intended to attack or ridicule personalities mentioned in it.

    The contents of this blog do not constitute legal advice.  Readers are encouraged to consult a licensed attorney for situation specific legal advice. The author accepts no responsibility for any harm, legal,  financial, or otherwise arising from the use of information in this blog as legal advice

    About:

    Enen Ambrose, the author of this Blog is a rule of law enthusiast and a member of the inaugural Judiciary Affairs Committee of the Uganda Law Society.