There is a quiet violence in procedure. It does not shout. It does not argue. It simply assumes; and in that assumption, rights collapse without anyone noticing. This is exactly what happened in two recent High Court decisions: Visare Uganda Ltd vs Festus Katerega T/A Quickway Auctioneers and 3 others. A copy of it can be accessed here:
A case is filed. A hearing date is fixed. Somewhere deep within a digital system, a notice is uploaded. The law nods in satisfaction: service has been effected. The machinery moves. The courtroom sits. The judge writes. And somewhere else, perhaps across the city, perhaps across a fragile internet connection, a litigant knows nothing.
We call this progress.
We call this efficiency.
We even call it justice.
In the recent ruling of the High Court of Uganda in Misc. Application No. 2289 of 2025, the court took the position that once a hearing notice is posted onto ECCMIS, service is complete. It held that it is not mandatory for a party to actually receive an email or SMS notification, so long as the system reflects that service was effected.
The implication is stark: the burden shifts entirely to the litigant or counsel to constantly monitor the system. Failure to do so is fatal. A case may be dismissed. Rights may evaporate. And yet, in the eyes of the law, nothing has gone wrong.
But open justice demands something far more stubborn, far more human. It demands not that proceedings merely exist in public form, but that those whose rights are at stake are actually present; or at the very least, actually aware. The old wisdom insisted that justice must be seen to be done. It did not imagine a world where justice could be technically visible yet practically invisible; where a notice exists, but never reaches; where a hearing occurs, but never touches the party it condemns.
And this is not an abstract concern. It is a doctrinal one.
The Supreme Court of Uganda, in Geoffrey Gatete & Another v William Kyobe, confronted a similar question under the language of “deemed good service.” The Court drew a careful and deliberate distinction; one that modern digital procedure now risks erasing.
It held that “deemed service” is a legal fiction, a procedural convenience that allows courts to proceed even where actual notice may not be proven. But it went further to warn that such service does not necessarily amount to “effective service.” For service to be effective, it must achieve its intended purpose: to bring the proceedings to the attention of the party.
A copy of the decision in Gatete can be accessed here:
This distinction is not semantic. It is foundational.
Because once the law accepts that something may be “deemed” without being real, it must also accept the consequences; that the fiction may fail in practice. And where it fails, justice demands correction.
Yes, there will be cases where a litigant deliberately avoids monitoring the system. But the system cannot punish the many for the bad faith of the few; especially when actual notice remains technically possible.
Yet the modern system presses on, collapsing this distinction. ECCMIS becomes both the record and the proof, both the act and its consequence. Once a notice is uploaded, the law assumes its journey is complete.
But a system is not a voice. A database is not a message. A record is not communication.
And so we arrive at a troubling convergence: a digital architecture that satisfies procedural form while undermining substantive awareness.
Context makes this even more urgent. Even in Kampala, internet access is not constant. Connectivity fluctuates. Costs are high. Power is unreliable. To build a legal system on the assumption that litigants and advocates will perpetually monitor an online platform is to design justice for an ideal world, not the real one.
What then becomes of open justice?
It remains, perhaps, in architecture. The courtroom doors are still open. The rulings are still written. The processes are still documented. But the litigant; the very person for whom the system exists; may never arrive, not out of defiance, but out of ignorance.
And in that moment, something profound happens.
Justice is no longer denied loudly. It is denied quietly.
Not in secrecy, but in silence.
Not by concealment, but by assumption.
Justice does not only die in closed courtrooms. It also dies in silent systems, where notices exist, but never reach.
This is not an argument against technology. It is an argument against unquestioned technology. Against systems that replace human communication with automated presumption. Against a jurisprudence that confuses efficiency with fairness.
The answer is neither retreat nor resistance. It is correction.
If ECCMIS is to be the backbone of modern judicial administration, then it must evolve beyond being a passive repository into an active communicator. It must speak, not just store. It must reach, not just record.
External notification systems are not luxuries; they are necessities. SMS alerts. Email notifications. Web based and Android Push Notifications, Real-time prompts that move beyond the confines of the system and into the lived reality of the user. And more than that, they must not be optional embellishments. They must be integral guarantees, designed to ensure that service is not merely deemed, but actually effected.
The Judiciary and the architects behind ECCMIS stand at a critical threshold. They have built the infrastructure. Now they must build the connection.
Because the law may deem service to be good, but justice demands that service be real.
A system that merely stores notices, without ensuring they reach those whose rights are at stake, does not advance justice, it endangers it. In a jurisdiction where access to digital infrastructure is uneven, to insist that litigants must constantly patrol an online platform is to replace fairness with fiction.
Technology must serve justice, not obscure it.
There is an old wisdom in scripture: No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bed. Instead, they set it on a stand, so that those who enter may see.
ECCMIS is that lamp, lit, visible in theory. But when a notice sits in a database without actively reaching the litigant, we have placed it under the bed. The light exists. It just does not shine where it is needed most. (Mark 4:21)
Let ECCMIS evolve, blending its internal efficiency with robust external communication, ensuring that every litigant is not merely assumed to know, but is given a real opportunity to know.
For if justice is to remain open, it must also remain visible.
Otherwise, quietly and without protest, justice will die in the darkness of its own systems. -THE END-
Disclaimers:
This Blog is not an attack on the Judicial officers who handed down the two decisions criticised above. It is not an attack on the institution of the Judiciary or EECMIS developers. It is intended to spark conversations to make E-Justice and the whole E-Government Digital Transformation a complete and wholesome journey and / or experience.
This Blog is not to be substituted for or taken for legal advice. The author does not accept responsibility or liability for damage suffered as a result of its use as legal advice. Readers are encouraged to consult a qualified and licensed attorney for situation specific legal advice.
Enen Ambrose. (Personal Archive)
Enen Ambrose
Member, Judiciary Affairs Committee of
Uganda Law Society.
For feedback or questions, write to: enen@enenlegalworld.com
If you are joining us for the first time: In Episode 1, we met Mzee Zakayo, who never built a granary but ate from the labor of others. His son Okello Anyapo inherited his appetite but not his cattle, and emptied his uncle Owera Apur’s granary because he was given access without rules.
In Episode 2, we lifted our eyes to Uganda’s constitutional granary, built in 1995, and watched Parliament abandon its duty to build walls around it. We saw the seven famines: the Shs 763 billion justice tax, the incompetence shield, the two‑man cartel, the executive pocket veto, the criminalization of transparency, the ghost tier of unaccountable actors, and the commission that judges itself.
In Episode 3, we watched while the petition slept. Application No. 11 of 2025, filed to halt judicial appointments, was never cause‑listed. The new Chief Justice and Principal Judge were sworn in while the application to pause their own appointments gathered dust in a court the Chief Justice once presided over.
In Episode 4, we knelt under the ojede cii with Owera Apur. We heard him pour out his soul: “How long shall the wicked gloat? How long shall the guilty feast while the innocent gnash their teeth in hunger?” The leaves trembled. Something, somewhere, had heard the cry.
In Episode 5, the ancestors answered across the border. We watched Cecil Miller, a man who never earned his seat, climb to Chief Justice, strangle habeas corpus, fire a judge with a single letter, and finally stood naked in a parking lot, shouting “Nyayo!” while cameras clicked and newspapers stayed silent. We learned that the ancestors do not file cause lists. They let the consequences ripen. And when the fruit is ready, it falls.
Now we return to Abongodero. The leaves have stopped trembling. Owera Apur has risen from the roots. And the question that began under the tree must now be answered by the living.
I. THE PROVERB FULFILLED
The elders of Abongodero had a saying:
You never send a starving man to the granary.
But we did.
We sent Okello Anyapo, the Judicial Service Commission, into the granary with no rules, no walls, no oversight. We watched him eat. We watched him grow fat. We watched him smile and say: “You allowed me. I merely accessed.”
And then we blamed him for being hungry.
But the fault was never Okello’s. The fault was Owera’s, the farmer who opened the door without building the walls. The fault was the village that admired Zakayo’s ingenuity and named itself after his emptiness.
The fault was Parliament’s.
For thirty years, Parliament held the keys to the granary. For thirty years, they walked past it, admired it, named committees after it, but never built the walls.
The Constitution commanded them. The people expected them. History waited for them.
And they did nothing.
II. THE SEVEN FAMINES ARE STILL WITH US
Now the famine is here.
Not the famine of weather. Not the famine of soil. A famine of justice.
· Shs 763 billion paid in bribes by court users, 43% of the justice sector budget. · Magistrates protected from removal for incompetence while Judges, Justices of Appeal and Justices of the Supreme Court face removal for incompetence. · Two people in a private room deciding who judges the nation. · The Attorney General holding a pocket veto over judicial discipline. · Transparency criminalized, a crime to look inside the granary and see what is stolen. · A ghost tier of unaccountable officers exercising power without oversight. · A commission that investigates, prosecutes, judges, and acquits itself.
And when the villagers cried out?
Injunctions. Uncause‑listed petitions. Stalled elections. Appointments proceeding like wedding ceremonies that will not wait for objections.
And finally, at the 2026 New Law Year, the warning:
“Social media attacks on judges will not be tolerated. Online criticism 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. Try the trauma of knowing that the man who now sits as Chief Justice once presided over the court that received an application to halt his own appointment, and the court never listed it.
That is trauma.
III. BUT THE ANCESTORS ARE NOT THE ONLY AUDITORS
The ancestors answered Miller. They let the consequences ripen. They stood him naked in a parking lot.
But the villagers of Kenya did not sit under a tree and wait. They organized. They spoke. They asked the questions that the powerful did not want to hear. They built institutions; the Law Society of Kenya, the human rights groups, the journalists who published what the newspapers would not, and they forced the system to answer.
Owera Apur did not return from the ojede cii to do nothing. He returned to the village square. He returned to the burial grounds. He returned to the ballot.
Because the ancestors do their work slowly. The living must do theirs urgently.
IV. THE BURIAL QUESTIONS
Across Uganda, in a thousand burials, graduations, and church introductions, your Members of Parliament are sitting on white chairs, waiting to be praised.
They have come to eat. They have come to be photographed. They have come to say, “I feel your pain.”
This time, you must ask them something different.
Not: “What have you brought us?”
But: “What have you done about what takes from us?”
Stand at the burial. Wait for the microphone. Look at your MP, whether they are Minister, Whip, or backbencher, and ask:
“Honourable, year in, year out:
We cannot get bail. We rot in remand for years before seeing a judge.
We lose our land at the High Court because the system is slow, expensive, and rigged against peasants.
Justice is only for those who can bribe or wait.
You are our voice in Parliament.
What have you done, specifically, to fix the courts that inflict this suffering on us?
Have you consulted the Uganda Law Society?
Have you studied the reforms they propose for judicial appointments, discipline, and accountability?
Do you even know that the Uganda Law Society exists?
And if you know, what Bill have you tabled, seconded, or supported to build the granary our Constitution demanded thirty years ago?”
Ask this question.
Not on WhatsApp. Not in a private message.
In public. On the record. Where the cameras are. Where the other mourners are listening.
Because an MP who deflects at a burial has nowhere to hide.
Because a question asked in the village square becomes a political fact that cannot be uncause‑listed.
Because this is how pressure builds, not from the top down, but from the grave up.
The Silence After the Question
If your MP stammers, they will remember that stammer on Election Day.
If your MP promises vaguely, record the promise. Send it to them in one year. Ask again.
If your MP says, “I didn’t know about this,” you have just educated a legislator. Your work is done, for now.
If your MP says, “I am already working with the Uganda Law Society,” ask for the Bill number. Ask for the Committee stage date. Ask when the granary will be built.
Do not let them leave that chair without accountability.
And then, do this;
Call your area MP. Not to abuse them. To instruct them.
“Honourable, I voted for you. Now I need you to table a Private Member’s Bill, or push the government to table one, that finally regulates the Judicial Service Commission and the President in judicial appointments and discipline.
The Uganda Law Society has already done the homework. They have studied the models. They have drafted provisions. They are waiting for a Member of Parliament with courage enough to carry their work into the Chamber.
Why are you not that Member?”
One call changes nothing.
Ten thousand calls change everything.
V. TO THE 12TH PARLIAMENT: THE NEW GUARD
You have been voted in. In May 2026, you will be sworn in.
History greets you warmly, as it greets all new MPs. You hold privilege, power, and a brief season when the public still listens.
You may fill your five years with funerals, allowances, foreign trips, Anti-Citizen legislation like the recentlt passed Sovereignty Act, 2026. You can choose to discuss mundane things like “Nyash” (like Hon. Odur Jonathan) or even fart in the august house (a video Speaker Annet Anita Among quizzing and probing which member of Parliament had visited the air is on public record). For some of you, you may merely look to rehearsals for 2031, which the media has widely reported is usually rigged.
Or you may build. But I verily warn you; if you don’t champion
The fixes demanded in ULS Constitutional Petition No. 12 of 2025 do not require miracles. They require sweat.
· Legislation that regulates the regulators. · Discipline standards that apply equally from magistrate to Chief Justice. · Structures that separate friendship from accountability. · A Judicial Service Commission where the Attorney General does not sit in judgment over judges he has fought in court.
The Uganda Law Society’s Judiciary Affairs Committee has done the technical work. They are not your enemies. They are your research department, waiting to be retained by democracy.
Walk across the stream. Consult them. Then legislate. But I verily say this to you: If you don’t legislate the reforms hinted here and many others, your voters will be thrown under the bus. They will continue to pay the “justice tax” and rot in jails under the weight of case backlog. And if they listen to us, they may hold you accountable at the ballot on polling day!
VI. TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT
The villagers are watching your door too.
They know that the Uganda Law Society filed Application No. 11 of 2025 in July last year, an urgent application asking this court to halt all judicial appointments until the main petition could be heard. They know the application argued that the Judicial Service Commission was unlawfully constituted, missing the two nominees the Constitution requires from the Uganda Law Society.
That application was never cause‑listed. No reasons were given.
The appointments proceeded anyway. The new Chief Justice and Principal Judge were sworn in. And the man who now presides over this court once presided over the very court that received that application, the application to pause his own appointment.
The villagers know these things because they are public facts, not allegations.
Now they wait. Not for a guarantee of victory. Not for a prediction of outcome. They wait to see whether this court has the courage to list the application—to summon the Judicial Service Commission, the body that recruits judges and holds the power to initiate removal of judges, and to hear the arguments of the Uganda Law Society.
Cause‑list the interlocutory application, My Lords.
Let the court sit. Let the lawyers speak. Let the Judicial Service Commission, your recruiters, your employers, the body that can initiate your removal; be called to account before the very judges it helps appoint.
It does not matter, in the end, whether the application is granted or denied. What matters is this: does the court have the courage to summon its own employer? Does it have the spine to look at the body that controls judicial careers and say: “Sit down. Answer. We will hear this case.”
The people are not asking for a favorable outcome. They are asking for a court that is not timid. A court that does not hide behind cause lists. A court that can be a bully‑beater; that can summon the powerful and demand an accounting.
Show us that the Judicial Service Commission is not above the law. Show us that it is not above the courts.
Cause‑list the application. Let the world see whether this bench has balls made of titanium alloy.
The proverb is not a verdict. It is a question. And the question hangs in the air, waiting for your answer.
VII. TO THE CITIZEN WHO FEELS HELPLESS
You are not powerless.
You do not need a law degree to ask a question. You do not need a Twitter verification badge to demand accountability. You do not need to file a petition to remind your MP that they work for you.
The granary will be built when building it costs more than neglecting it.
Make neglect expensive.
Ask the question at the burial. Record the answer. Share it. Remember it on Election Day.
And when you feel the weight of the system pressing down, when you have knocked on every door and found them locked; remember Miller.
Remember that the ancestors are patient. Remember that parking lots are everywhere. Remember that the system you build to protect yourself may one day become the cage you cannot escape.
But also remember this: the ancestors do not act alone. They act through us. Through the questions we ask, the votes we cast, the institutions we build, the silence we refuse.
The ancestors answered Miller. But the Law Society of Kenya, the human rights lawyers, the journalists, the citizens—they answered too. They did not wait for the parking lot. They built the walls that Miller’s allies had left empty.
So shall we.
VIII. THE CHOICE
Mzee Zakayo is long dead.
But his children are still in Parliament. Some of them sit on the Judicial Service Commission. Some of them wear robes and warn about trauma from tweets.
And the villagers?
They are still standing at the granary door. Still waiting. Still hungry.
Abongodero is tired.
Hunger remembers.
And this time, the people are not just watching the granary door.
They are standing at the burial, waiting for the microphone.
They are standing at the courthouse, waiting for the cause list.
They are standing at the ballot, waiting for 2031.
Build the granary, Honourable.
Cause‑list the application, My Lords.
Ask the question, Citizen.
Or be prepared to answer for the emptiness;
In this life, and at the judgment.
You never send a starving man to the granary.
And you never send a sleeping Parliament to guard justice.
But you also never leave the granary to the ancestors alone. The end!
DISCLAIMERS
1. On Sub Judice
This series references ULS Constitutional Petition No. 12 of 2025 and related applications only as evidence of public grievance and legislative failure. It does not urge the Constitutional Court to grant or dismiss the petition. It does not analyze the merits of the petitioners’ arguments. It does not predict or demand any particular judicial outcome. The duty of Parliament to legislate exists independently of this or any litigation.
All facts presented regarding judicial appointments and cause lists are matters of public record.
2. On Intent
This series is not a call for mob justice, disorder, or disrespect toward judicial officers. It is a call for legislative accountability, civic engagement, and institutional reform. It is written in the tradition of the village baraza; where truth is spoken plainly, proverbs carry the weight of law, and leaders are expected to listen without punishing the messenger.
Criticism of systems is not attack on persons. Demanding accountability is not contempt.
3. On Legal Advice
Nothing in this series constitutes legal advice. The author is an Advocate and member of the Judiciary Affairs Committee of the Uganda Law Society, but writes here in his personal capacity. Readers with specific legal problems should consult a licensed practitioner.
Enen Ambrose Advocate Member, Judiciary Affairs Committee Uganda Law Society.
Disclaimer: The story of Cecil Miller is drawn from historical accounts, particularly Paul Mwangi’s The Black Bar. This retelling is a synthesis for the purpose of public education and advocacy. Readers of this Blog are encouraged to purchase a copy for the full account and context of The Black Bar by Paul Mwangi (SC)
If you are joining us for the first time: In Episode 4, Owera Apur knelt under the 160‑year‑old ojede cii tree and poured out his soul. He called on Zakayo, on the ancestors, on the spirits of the land. He asked the question no constitution can answer: How then shall we live when the council is bought and the granary is empty? The leaves trembled. Something, somewhere, had heard the cry.
Tonight, the ancestors reply. Not with wind. With a mirror.
I. THE FOREIGN SEED
In the 1970s a contract judge arrived in Kenya from Guyana. His name was Cecil Henry Ethelwood Miller. By blood he was a Black Pan‑Africanist, a World War II pilot who had “dusted the Aryan race.” By reputation he should have been a hero.
By work ethic he was almost useless.
But President Daniel Arap Moi saw hunger in Miller’s eyes. So Moi gave him Kenyan citizenship, a constitutional tenure as a High Court judge, a large plantation, and a Mercedes‑Benz limousine. The same way Owera Apur opened his granary to his nephew Okello, Moi opened the highest doors of the judiciary to a man who had never built anything.
Miller’s appetite only grew. He wanted to be Chief Justice. He understood the price: total, slavish loyalty to Moi. The ancestors watched the foreign seed take deep root in Kenyan soil.
In 1983 President Moi wanted to destroy his once‑powerful minister Charles Njonjo. He set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to investigate Njonjo for alleged abuse of office, everything from amassing firearms to plotting coups. The commission was widely seen as a kangaroo court, designed to humiliate Njonjo and drive him out of politics.
Miller was one of three commissioners. He walked in carrying two things: a personal grudge against Njonjo (who had once passed him over for promotion) and zero judicial independence.
The transcripts from The Black Bar are excruciating. During the hearings, lead counsel Lee Muthoga probed Njonjo about whether he had paid an MP, Amos Ng’ang’a, to resign his parliamentary seat so Njonjo could run for it. The exchange was tense. Njonjo’s lawyer, Mr. Deverell, kept interrupting with sarcastic remarks, at one point suggesting that “any other consideration” might include buying ice‑cream.
Miller exploded:
“You keep making your jokes, Mr. Deverell. You keep on making your jokes. In the long run you may find it is not going to accrue to your credibility and your status before this inquiry. You keep on making your jokes. You take out your cold icecream and push it into your mouth. Proceed please.”
The outburst revealed Miller’s predetermined hostility. He was not there to inquire; he was there to convict. Deverell saw the commission for what it was: a kangaroo court designed to destroy Njonjo.
The mission succeeded. Njonjo was politically crushed.
And in 1986 Miller was rewarded exactly as he had schemed: he was sworn in as Chief Justice of Kenya.
A man whose judicial temperament was summed up by an ice‑cream joke now controlled every judge in the Republic.
The ancestors were already laughing.
III. THE HABEAS CORPUS THAT MILLER STRANGLED
On 6 April 1987 a man named Stephen Mbaraka Karanja kissed his wife goodbye in Limuru and left for Nairobi. He was never seen alive again.
After seven weeks of desperate searching, his wife filed a writ of habeas corpus asking the court to order the CID Director to produce her husband.
The case came before Justice Derek Schofield. The CID claimed Karanja had been “shot while escaping.” Schofield did not believe them. He ordered an exhumation, an independent post‑mortem, and affidavits.
The grave was empty. No body. No records. Schofield issued a notice to the CID Director to show cause why he should not be committed for contempt.
That was when President Moi sent Chief Justice Cecil Miller himself into Schofield’s chambers with a direct order: “Lay off the case.”
Schofield refused. He told Miller: tell the President to keep his hands off the judiciary, or I will tell the President myself.
Miller did not wait. On 11 August 1987, without any formal application, without any hearing, Miller summoned the lawyers, seized the file, and transferred the entire matter. He stood the case over “until judges return from vacation.”
Later he moved it to a known government apologist, who ruled that once a man is dead, habeas corpus cannot issue, because “the person or body” does not mean a corpse.
Schofield resigned in disgust and left the country. The Law Society hosted a farewell dinner. The only senior government officer brave enough to attend was immediately fired.
Stephen Mbaraka Karanja’s family never got justice. The habeas corpus died in silence.
The Chief Justice had personally executed a murder cover‑up in open court.
IV. THE JUDGE WHO FIRED A JUDGE
By now Miller’s interference was routine. He transferred cases at will, summoned lawyers, stood matters over, and told other judges to “lay off” sensitive files.
One man refused to bow: Justice Patrick O’Connor.
Miller tried everything. When nothing worked, he issued a punitive transfer order sending O’Connor to a remote station.
O’Connor defied it.
On 26 September 1988 Miller sat down and wrote a single letter:
“You are hereby dismissed from the service of the Judiciary with immediate effect.”
No hearing. No tribunal. No reasons. Just one letter from a man who had never earned the seat he sat in.
O’Connor was gone. The message to every honest judge was clear: resist Miller and you die.
One judge had said no. Miller made sure he would never say anything again.
V. THE PARKING LOT
By 1989 Miller had become a drunk, violent eccentric who required armed policemen standing guard outside his chambers, something no Chief Justice before or since has ever needed.
On a September afternoon he returned from lunch heavily intoxicated. He opened the sealed box he called his “disposal orders”, instructions for how his body should be treated after death. Then he began marching around his chambers shouting drill commands to himself.
The policemen called the Commissioner of Police.
Miller burst out, punching the air. He rushed into the High Court parking lot, in full view of journalists, lawyers, and the public.
There, Cecil Henry Ethelwood Miller, Chief Justice of the Republic of Kenya, dropped his trousers.
He placed one shoe on his head.
And he marched again.
Every few steps he stopped, raised his fist, and screamed Moi’s slogan at the top of his lungs:
“Nyayo! Nyayo!”
Nyayo meant “footsteps.” He was marching in the President’s footsteps, straight into naked madness.
The Commissioner of Police and his men wrestled the naked Chief Justice into a car and drove him home.
No newspaper published the photographs. No radio station broadcast the story. No television channel dared show the images that filled cameras that day.
Five days later, on 5 September 1989, Miller died. The official cause was listed as septicemia.
The real cause was the ancestors’ audit.
VI. THE ANCESTORS’ AUDIT
The villagers who had abandoned Miller to his gods did not celebrate. They did not dance. They did not say, “See, justice came.”
Because justice did not come. The system that made Miller also protected him, even in madness, even in death. His family stayed in the official residence for months. Armed police guarded his widow. The government enforced his vengeance posthumously.
No one was held accountable. No one was punished. No one even spoke.
But the ancestors had their way.
Not through a court. Not through a petition. Not through a judgment. Through a parking lot and a shoe on a head and a slogan shouted by a naked man.
The ancestors do not file cause lists. They do not wait for submissions. They do not deliberate.
They simply let the consequences ripen. And when the fruit is ready, it falls.
Owera Apur’s invocation was answered—not by the council, not by Parliament, not by any human institution. It was answered by the slow, patient gravity of truth.
VII. HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE?
So we return to the question.
How shall we live when the granary is empty? How shall we live when the petition sleeps? How shall we live when the door does not open?
We live like the villagers who finally understand: there is no institution coming to save us.
We live knowing that the system may never be fixed in our lifetime. We live knowing that the judges who betray justice may never face a tribunal. We live knowing that the MPs who refuse to legislate may be re‑elected.
But we also live knowing this:
The ancestors are patient. The gods are not asleep. And parking lots are everywhere.
Miller’s story is not a promise of justice. It is a warning against the illusion that power can protect you forever. It is a reminder that the system you build to shield yourself from accountability may one day become the cage you cannot escape.
So how shall we live?
We live with our eyes open. We live asking the questions at burials. We live recording the promises and the failures. We live building the granary even if we never eat from it.
We live like people who know that the ancestors are watching.
And we leave the rest to them.
In the final episode: Owera Apur rises from the roots. The leaves speak one last time. The choice that cannot be postponed. We will show that while the ancestors SHALL no doubt have their day, we, their descendants still have a role to play to bring all the living “Okello Anyapos” to order, to serve with intergrity, purpose and accountability.
Episode 6 drops tomorrow. 5 PM.
Disclaimer: The story of Cecil Miller is drawn from historical accounts, particularly Paul Mwangi’s The Black Bar. This retelling is a synthesis for the purpose of public education and advocacy. Readers are encouraged to get a copy of the book for a full account of Kenya’s journey of Judicial Accountability as narrated by the author.
If you are joining us for the first time: In Episode 1, we met Mzee Zakayo, who never built a granary but ate from the labor of others. His son Okello Anyapo inherited his appetite but not his cattle, and emptied his uncle Owera’s granary because he was given access without rules. In Episode 2, we lifted our eyes to Uganda’s constitutional granary, built in 1995, and watched Parliament abandon its duty to build walls around it. We saw the seven famines: the Shs 763 billion justice tax, the incompetence shield, the two-man cartel, the executive pocket veto, the criminalization of transparency, the ghost tier of unaccountable actors, and the commission that judges itself.
THIS IS THE SOIL FROM WHICH ULS CONSTITUTIONAL PETITION NO. 12 OF 2025: UGANDA LAW SOCIETY VS ATTORNEY GENERAL ROSE
The petition was filed. The Application for a temporary injunction to halt Judicial appointments pending disposal of the main petition; The arguments were made. The rot was laid bare.
And the Constitutional Court is in no hurry.
The cause list does not call it. The months pass. The granary empties further.
Every day the petition sleeps is a day Okello eats.
Every delay is a verdict delivered without judgment, a verdict that says: this urgency is not our urgency.
The villagers are watching the courthouse door, just as they watch the granary door.
And the door does not open.
WHILE THE PETITION SLEPT
An urgent Constitutional Application, Application No. 11 of 2025, was filed alongside the main petition. It asked the court to halt all judicial appointments pending the determination of the substantive petition.
Among the grounds: the Judicial Service Commission was unlawfully constituted, missing the two nominees the Constitution requires from the Uganda Law Society.
The Constitutional Court did not cause-list that application.
So the appointments proceeded.
The new Chief Justice, the Hon. Fr. Flavian Zeija, was sworn in. The new Principal Judge, the Hon. Judge Jane Francis Abodo, was sworn in.
Before his elevation, the Hon. Dr. Justice Zeija was the Deputy Chief Justice. In that capacity, he presided over the very Constitutional Court that received Application No. 11 of 2025, the application asking the court to pause appointments, including his own.
The court did not list the application. No reasons were given. The appointments proceeded.
In Abongodero, the elders would say: when the man guarding the granary door benefits from what passes through it, the door stays open.
These are facts. Draw your own conclusions.
THE POWER TO STOP ALL THIS LIES IN YOUR HANDS AS A CITIZEN AND AJURI CONSTITUENCY IS PROOF OF CONCEPT.
The Honorable Hamson Obua did not lose by accident.
He rehearsed monarchy in public. He crowned himself Holy Trinity, God the Father, Honorable Member of Parliament, Ajuri Constituency, God the Son, Government Chief and God the Holy Spirit, Vice National Chairperson of the National Resistance Movement for Northern Uganda of political titles. He spoke succession like family inheritance: Museveni, then Muhoozi, then Muhoozi’s children.
Ajuri listened.
They watched soldiers. They watched a disputed poll. They watched power glare at them from armored vehicles.
And they voted again.
Twice in under one month.
History does not always move slowly. Sometimes it slaps.
Enter Badman Jalameso.
Teacher. Organizer. Refusal embodied. Not a dynasty. Not a surname throne. Just a man carried by exhaustion with entitlement.
Badman Jalameso is not a saint. He is a signal.
The signal is this: voters will rise when the granary stays empty.They will require answers and when the answers are not forthcoming, The leader who fails to answer appropriately will be sent back home.
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.
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. TheIncompetence 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!.
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:
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 9and 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”
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.
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 Blogis a rule of law enthusiast and a member of the inaugural Judiciary Affairs Committee of the Uganda Law Society.
It’s on life support. Plugged into a system designed to kill it slowly.
Judges on Acting Terms. Courts on Probation. Justice on the Brink.
Here’s what they’ve done:
Invented a system where new judges are appointed on in an acting capacity, with the duration determined at the whims of the appointing authority—yes, like interns at a mobile money kiosk.
Given the President the power to recycle retired judges, no questions asked. No medical. No mental. No morals.
Created performance evaluations for judges like they’re applying for a promotion at a law firm.
That’s right, you’re not day dreaming, the system was rigged. In 2022, the Constitutional Court damned this shrewd “sharp practice” and threw it in our Constitutional History by declaring it unconstitutional in Dr. Busingye Kabumba and Karamagi vs Attorney General.
Good judgment, right? Damn, the government rigged it. It instead created a legal loophole which enabled it to pass these damned Regulations.
Firstly, it appealed against. Secondly the government obtained what is in effect a suspension of the independence of the Judiciary as the Supreme Court delays to decide the Government’s Appeal .
A copy of the decision which suspended the independence of High Court Judges as the government waits for a decision in its own appeal from the above case can be accessed from here:
Okay, let’s dive into the evil in the Regulations. Reg. 29–33 and 31 are the smoking guns. And what they shoot is judicial independence—straight between the eyes.
And Then There’s 2026…
Uganda’s next elections are not just around the corner—they’re rumbling like thunder.
And we know the script:
Mass arrests.
Disappearances.
Violent suppression.
Habeas corpus applications flying like confetti.
Human rights cases lined up like a firing squad.
It will take judges to hear them all.
But what kind of judges?
Not fearless ones. Not permanent ones. Not independent ones.
The Regulations guarantee this:
When the state comes for you, the judge before you may still be “acting,” “probationary,” or “awaiting confirmation.”
You don’t need a judge praying for job security.
You need a judge with balls forged from titanium alloy, ready to grab the State by its ball sac and say:
“Back off. The Constitution says this citizen walks free.”
These Regulations can’t produce that judge. They produce whispering cowards in robes.
But Wait, There’s a Recruitment Cartel Too
They didn’t just kill judicial independence at the appointment level.
They also built a Search and Recruitment Committee—and a Sub-Committee—with a quorum of TWO people.
Let that sink in: Two people can now shortlist Uganda’s judges.
Who are these people?
The Attorney General—yes, the government’s own lawyer.
The Chairperson of the JSC—currently Justice Singiza, who was once branded a “Nazi Judge” by opposition supporters for adjourning Besigye’s habeas corpus case instead of hearing it urgently.
And guess who they kicked out of this process?
The two (2) representatives of the Uganda Law Society.
The very people the Constitution says should be part of the Judicial Service Commission.
It Was Planned. Timed. Executed.
These Regulations were passed while the Uganda Law Society is in court, fighting to elect its representatives.
The plan is clear: Keep them out. Lock the process down. Staff the courts with friendly judges. Control the law from the inside out.
This isn’t just bad law.
It’s a judicial cartel in robes.
And You Think It Doesn’t Affect You?
Wait until your land is taken. Wait until your protest turns into a prison sentence. Wait until your loved one disappears. Wait until the courtroom is the only place left to cry out.
Then you’ll pray that your judge isn’t still auditioning for a contract renewal.
Here’s the Message:
Uganda’s justice system is being rebuilt—not to protect you, but to survive you.
It is no longer about law. It’s about control. It’s about loyalty. It’s about silencing justice before you can even plead for it.
This is the war. This is the moment. This is the alarm.
If you have eyes you better see, and if you have ears you better listen.
Photocredit: Team of Advocate Paul Mukiibi with their Brand: Chain breakers in the campaign to represent the Uganda Law Society at the Judicial Service Commission.
It started like a flicker—a tiny spark of defiance that should’ve ignited a roaring wildfire of rage and justice. Instead, it was smothered by the gargantuan, self-righteous boots of censorship, as if the admins of the Northern Bar-Bench Forum were playing the role of divine gatekeepers to the underworld of logic, reason, and free speech. It was the perfect storm waiting to brew, and here we were, caught in the vortex of unrelenting madness.
Imagine this: a friend—let’s call them Advocate C—dared to share a link to an article so scorching that the digital air itself trembled. The scandal? The Honorable Chief Justice, in a move so brazen it could only be conceived in the dankest corners of the power-obsessed universe, allegedly schemed to extend the retirement age for Supreme Court Justices. Why? To keep his gnarled hands on the throne, forever and ever. He also decided to appoint an Acting Principal Judge without so much as a whiff of the President’s blessing, like a schoolyard bully claiming the lunchroom as his own personal fiefdom. The legal streets of the Forum exploded in righteous fury, an inferno of truth and justice clamoring for attention.
And then… the admins. Oh, the admins. The self-crowned, self-important emperors of silence—oh yes, those power-hungry weasels. They descended like locusts, their ban-hammers blazing. Link? Gone. Criticism? Erased. “Don’t post things that make other members uncomfortable,” they decreed, as if comfort was the holy grail of democracy. What’s uncomfortable, you ask? The CJ’s alleged power grab that should’ve made every Ugandan’s blood boil? That’s what should’ve made us all “uncomfortable.” But no, not in their world. The admins had a higher calling: the suppression of truth, under the guise of “unity” and “comfort.” What a joke.
That night, at 8:43 PM, the world shook. I—Ambrose Enen—I was done. I had had enough of their charade. With the force of a thousand furious lions, I stormed into the admins’ fortress of lies. I sent them a question that cracked their gilded masks and made their self-satisfied jaws clench like desperate prey:
“Why are you strangling debates about the Hon. Chief Justice, you cowardly sycophants?”
I threw down the gauntlet, demanding they justify their pathetic, trembling submission to the powers that be, to shield His Lordship from the fire of scrutiny. The CJ had once bellowed like a lion, declaring, “If you’re not criticized, it means you’re doing nothing and the people just choose to ignore you!” And here they were, trying to shield him from even the faintest whiff of criticism. Hypocrisy? Monumental. So, I unsheathed Article 29 of the Constitution like a blazing sword and sliced through their pitiful, sanctimonious excuses with the fury of an avenging god. I invoked the speech of the Chief Justice himself when he delivered his own lead Judgment in Kabaziguruka case, where the Supreme Court put a grinding halt on the trial of civilians in the Court martial. The Chief Justice was referring to President Isaac Ssemakade’s work method, weekly public press engagements dubbed the “RNB Live” in which fireballs were hurled at the Justices of the Supreme Court for delaying to deliver that very judgment. The very Supreme Court had in an earlier judgment in the case of Charles Onyango Obbo and Andrew Mujuni Mwenda had crowned free speech as an untouchable deity, immune to the fragile egos of all public officials from the President to the Military.
I screamed at them, demanding they answer me: Had they erased the CJ’s own edict—that criticism is the lifeblood of action? Or had they buried the people’s right to challenge power under a mountain of self-inflicted fear?
I didn’t stop there. I summoned the name of the great Isaac Ssemakadde, a volcano of legal brilliance who melts the hearts of tyrants and leaves them quaking in their boots. His name sent ripples of panic through their ranks, like a shark’s fin slicing through calm waters. And I laughed—loudly—at their terrified whimpering.
The admins’ response? Hilarious. They pulled out the same tired, sanctimonious rhetoric, claiming the Forum, created in 2019 by the then “mighty” Conrad Oroya, was meant to unite “advocates” and “judicial officers” from the greater North. They paraded their so-called patrons, from the CJ down to the lowliest Magistrates, and tried to paint themselves as paragons of unity and reason. But wait—oh wait—they accused the Radical New Bar (RNB) of destroying the Forum, branding us as “scourges of the legal profession.” Apparently, our “scathing attacks” were too much for their fragile egos, too sharp for their delicate sensibilities. They shrieked that we’d turned their sacred Forum into a warzone. And that—that was their best excuse for censorship.
But, my friends, that wasn’t enough. They threatened to boot us out, to banish us from their “pious” space where only their carefully curated lies were welcome. Oh, how I laughed. I thought of Maxime Rovere’s words in his book, How to Deal with Idiots and not be one yourself: “Idiots infest every cesspool, even the loftiest halls of government.” But this wasn’t a government cesspool, oh no. This was a digital one, run by clowns in armor of “civility” and “comfort.” I held back my laughter only because it was a laugh of pure, unadulterated rage.
The admins couldn’t take the heat, and then, boom. A revolution. It didn’t come in the form of an army, no. It came in the form of words. Words sharper than a thousand blades.
A Grade 1 Magistrate—yes, a Grade 1 Magistrate—came for them, tearing through their lies like a wildfire through dry grass. “Article 29 doesn’t grovel before judicial comfort,” they roared. “You’re strangling debate about the CJ, and in doing so, you’re ripping the soul from the legal profession itself.”
Then, like a chorus of angels singing the hymn of truth, came another Magistrate. It came with fire in their belly and venom in their words. “Your fear of the Radical New Bar only exposes your cowardice,” they snarled. “You’re terrified of a few questions—questions!—about the CJ’s power plays. What kind of admins are you?”
Then came Advocate A—oh yes, Advocate A—with a fire so hot it could melt the very walls of their sanctimonious den. They came at the admins like a raging storm, laughing at their pathetic attempts to shield the CJ from the rightful fire of criticism. They mocked them for their “bootlicking” and told the admins to lick the dust. They didn’t just fight—they laughed in their faces. And their message? “You’ve earned this defeat, you glorious cowards.”
But that’s when the real rebellion began. Just after my banishment, Advocate B—yes, Advocate B—launched a tidal wave of resistance. “See you in Gulu Learned Friends,” they sneered. “But first, post that message which was deleted here!”
The forum’s demise wasn’t my banishment. Oh no. It died when it sold its soul, when it chose silence over truth, when it cowered before power. And here’s the thing—the admins? They didn’t even see it coming.
But then came the words of Isaac Ssemakadde—oh, those words, those molten words that seared their way into my soul. “Impunity’s greatest weakness is the craving it has for respectability, legitimacy, and sycophancy. Deny it one of those lubricants, and you will begin to see ‘how the mighty fall.’ So fast.” And then he said the words that would light the fuse of my rebellion for good: “Principle is always vulnerable in the face of power; especially in spaces of long-term subjugation where the legal culture is manipulative & unapologetic in defence of power. Only a revolution, grounded in principle, can reverse things now.”
I heard it. The call. The revolution, forged in fire and principle, was now in my blood. And so, like a storm that cannot be stalled, I went to battle. Unbanned. Unbowed. Unafraid.
Because here’s the truth: The Northern Bar-Bench Forum was supposed to be a crucible of ideas, a place where Uganda’s brightest minds clashed, burned away the dross, and emerged better. Instead, it became a cesspool, a sanctuary for the most dangerous thing of all: fear. Fear of truth. Fear of scrutiny. Fear of Article 29.
And in that fear, they forgot. They forgot what a forum was meant to be. They forgot that power, unchecked and unchallenged, is the very thing that devours empires.
So here’s to the outcasts, the truth-tellers, the Ssemakaddes who set the world ablaze with righteous fury! Here’s to Advocate A, Advocate B, and every single renegade who refused to bow before the gods of comfort. Here’s to Article 29 and the indomitable, damn-near-holy faith that free speech isn’t a gift from admins or judges—it’s our birthright, you small little intern Honorable WhatsApp administrator dictators!
Image: President Isaac Kimaze Ssemakade. Image Credit: Isaac Ssemakade’s X(formerly Twitter post)
Uganda’s judiciary just went full-on nuclear—and there’s no holding back. On New Law Year day, the very system that’s supposed to be the bastion of justice turned into a circus. The ULS President got stonewalled, the Chief Justice practically demanded an apology, and then came the blow—Justice Ssekana slammed down a two-year sentence on Ssemakadde for contempt of court. It wasn’t just a ruling; it was a middle finger to anyone who dared question the establishment.
And if that wasn’t enough, the entire scandal is being dragged into the international arena. The Judiciary, in a move that can only be described as a self-inflicted public relations massacre, has tried to weaponize an Interpol Red Notice for an offense as laughably flimsy and culturally controversial as “insulting the modesty of a woman.” Yes, you read that right. While Interpol is busy chasing down genuine threats, war Lords, Drug cartels, Uganda’s courts are out here acting like they’re in a personal vendetta—pursuing a man for throwing sharp words at the system.
The madness deepens: the whole legal shambles that produced the warrant is under revision in the High Court, completely unattended, like a sinking ship left to rot. And guess what? Ssemakadde isn’t going down without a fight. He’s vowed, through his legal team, to challenge any Red Notice that dares to be issued against him—an audacious promise that practically screams “bring it on!”
Meanwhile, the Executive and Parliament, both seasoned in navigating international diplomacy, stand in stark contrast to the Judiciary’s response. Having faced sanctions, blacklisting, and travel bans in the past, they are well-versed in managing the complex web of international scrutiny, asset freezes, and the like. Who doesn’t recall the free Bobi Wine protests that rocked global capitals. Who doesn’t recall a foreign affairs minister who was on global travel sanctions. Have we very quickly forgotten the backlash from Western states when the Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed into Law and upheld by the Constitutional Court. Experts and negotiators from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs burnt the midnight oil and the Ugandan state is still here to stay. The Judiciary, however, is primarily trained in upholding decorum, judicial conduct, and domestic legal frameworks. It is ill-equipped to handle the nuances of foreign policy, international relations, and diplomacy. So, the real question is: if the international community begins to ask hard-hitting questions about accountability and the rule of law—questions that go beyond the courtroom—will the Attorney General and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs step in to shield the Judiciary from the fallout? Or will they be left to fend for themselves, with their lack of expertise in international relations becoming glaringly apparent?
Yes, development partners like the European Union, funders of the SUPREME project, Pepperdine University behind the plea bargain project, IDLO, Amnesty International, the Democratic Governance Facility (who knows they may come back) will have key questions about transparency, accountability and Rule of Law, directly addressed to our third estate about where their Millions of Aid is going. They will not be amused if they think their resources are being deployed to fight what appears to be petty fights.
And what more, individual partner states with a long tradition of democracy may refuse to hand over President Ssemakade on grounds that the Red Notice is politically motivated and targeting free speech and dissent. Dramatically enough, interpol itself may refuse to put out the Red Notice, why? It goes against the Interpol Constitution. The offense leading up to the warrant isn’t listed as one of those for which a Red Notice can be put out and enforced.
This isn’t your everyday legal drama; it’s a blood-soaked, high-stakes showdown where the very soul of Uganda’s justice system is on trial. Ssemakadde, with the cunning of a renegade professor from Money Heist, baited the Judiciary into a carefully crafted trap. Just like the Professor orchestrated the heists with meticulous precision, Ssemakadde pulled off a legal masterstroke, using the Judiciary’s own flaws against it. His provocation wasn’t a reckless act of defiance; it was a radical surgery planned to expose the raw, festering wounds of Uganda’s ailing legal system. The Judiciary walked straight into his trap, and now the courts stand naked and vulnerable on the global stage.
So here we are, witnessing a system that once prided itself on upholding justice now doing a complete 180 into chaos. The Judiciary has thrown down the gauntlet, and if the international community decides to respond, it won’t be a pretty sight. The madness is palpable, the stakes are astronomical, and the fallout could reshape Uganda’s legal landscape forever.
At this point, there’s only one entity that can pull Uganda’s judiciary back from the brink of absolute disaster: the relevant High Court Judge. The request for a Red Notice is a ticking time bomb, and if it’s not halted right here, within the Judiciary itself, the fallout will be catastrophic. The international community is already watching, and Uganda’s fragile legal system is on the verge of being exposed in the harshest possible light. This isn’t just about one man; this is about the future of Uganda’s justice system and its credibility on the world stage.
But amid the chaos, there’s still hope. There are still clean judges, magistrates, and lawyers who believe in the integrity of the law and the values of justice. This system is not beyond redemption, but it’s going to take those who truly care about upholding the rule of law to stand up, speak out, and fight for a better, fairer future. This moment—this unprecedented crisis—can be the turning point for Uganda’s legal system if the right people step forward.
The Judiciary stands at a crossroads. If swift, decisive action isn’t taken now, Uganda’s courts will find themselves at the heart of a global scandal—a bloodbath of embarrassment from which there may be no recovery. This is the moment of truth. The question is: will the Judiciary rise to the occasion, or will it collapse under the weight of its own mistakes?
The clock is ticking, and the time for action is now. The relevant High Court Judge holds the key—let them make the right call before it’s too late.
DISCLAIMER: This Blog is not made to attack the institution of the Judiciary but to spark conversations and discourse on vital reforms.
More about the author on the about page for feedback and comments.
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