Did court actually quash the Bamugemereire land probe?

In April 2008, 20 pupil residents of Nassolo dormitory at Budo Junior School perished in a mystery fire that left us with more questions than answers about what happened that fateful night. What is most remembered about this incident is the warning to anybody who spread rumors of the adult bodies in the inferno, even when rescuers and parents insisted that they saw two male adult bodies.

Twelve years later, the mystery still lives on.

When corruption was exuded in the education sector, the president set up a commission of inquiry on December 12, 2009 headed by Justice Ezekiel Muhanguzi to investigate the prevalent corruption in UPE funds and other resources. The Commission was required among other tasks to make a comprehensive review of the UPE and USE programmes, investigate alleged existence of ghost pupils and teachers in schools per district and look into the efficiency of using enrolment numbers instead of attendance lists as a basis for releasing capitation grants to schools. This is just one of the many commissions, again.

On the eve of the Kibwetere 10th anniversary; March 16, 2010, another wonder befell our nation. The Kasubi Tombs (Mausoleum) went down in a burning blaze. The chaotic scenes that turned political cost some lives. Another Judicial Commission of Inquiry by Justice George Engwau was constituted to find the facts.

The public hearings were conducted at UMA Conference Centre in Lugogo. Notable politician Damiano Lubega was a Buganda kingdom representative on the commission. One of the witnesses Princess Gertrude Tebutagwabwe, the new caretaker of the tombs, made a personal appeal to the commission to speed up inquiries to enable the reconstruction of the tombs. The commission’s recommendations were so abysmal because they didn’t point to the aspirations of political freebooters. Another closed chapter!

In June 2013, the KCCA Act 2010 was put to its first test when 17 City Councilors petitioned the Minister of Kampala Frank Tumwebaze to set up the tribunal to investigate allegations of abuse of office, incompetence, misconduct and misbehavior by the Lord Mayor.

Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki appointed High Court Judge Catherine Bamugemereire attached to the Anti-Corruption Court to head this tribunal. Her name now in itself reverberates so easily with commissions of inquiries.

At first, she was thought to be a ‘westerner’ from somewhere in Ankole when she chaired this tribunal that investigated and caused the eventual impeachment of Lord Mayor, Erias Lukwago. It was a surprise to many that she is actually a Gishu from Namisindwa district; formerly part of Manafwa, whose maiden name Hakhasa is known by a few, especially her OBs and OGs.

This commission is one of the few inquiries that accomplished work in its preset 60 days and the inquiry report made public and implemented. All of us who have been active and alive to Uganda’s trends know what happened thereafter.

Seven years later, little or nothing can be said of what this was intended to achieve. The findings and recommendations were blurred into the supremacy of one court order over another, as warring sides branded judicial officers as partisan. This was the demise of that inquiry.

The petitioners successfully proved eight of the twelve particulars pleaded according to the Commission’s findings. The tribunal on the basis of standard of proof, proved a prima facie case for the removal of Erias Lukwago from the position of Lord Mayor of Kampala Capital City.

In a stormy council meeting chaired by Tumwebaze, 29 councilors voted for the removal of the Mayor. One most remembered event of this censure day was when Makindye West councilor Allan Ssewanyana stood up on a point of order, brandishing a document, claiming it was a court order halting the meeting. His stunts of denouncing the proceedings in front of the minister while he stood onto a table catapulted him into the August house a few years later. He is currently my representative in Parliament.

Lukwago lingered on the fate of Judges Yasin Nyanzi and Lydia Mugambe’s Court Orders for survival and sought another term in 2016 which came so easily as a sympathy vote for him and a protest vote against the ruling NRM. All the 29 Councilors that jubilated at his impeachment were voted out of the city hall and many of these have since fallen into our political abyss. Another probe on the shelves!

In June 2015, Mr. Museveni again appointed Justice Bamugemereire to head the six-month UNRA probe. She had just convicted and sentenced local government PS John Kashaka to 10 years and 10 days imprisonment for causing loss of shs.4b to government in the LC bicycle scam. The UNRA probe was indeed very revealing.

The voluminous 1,300-page report was handed over to the President in May 2016 shortly after being voted back into office for his current term. In the report, it was discovered that about shs.4 trillion was misappropriated by the outgoing old UNRA administration whereas the shs.9 trillion that was used in 7 years could only construct a paltry 1500km of roads – an average of only 214km annually.

Interestingly, the report revealed that these misappropriated funds would have been enough to cover a whopping 5147km. What a record-breaking loss!

The President ordered the IGG, CIID and AG to expeditiously implement the commission’s report by jointly following up over 90 culprits for prosecution and attaching their assets for recovery.

The Probe also recommended that two leading construction companies Energo Project and Dott Services that were implicated in the report be blacklisted. It is evident that these were just awarded more projects and Ugandans have since left this to fate.

Before Mr. President could apprise himself with the report, the culprits  were on their way to secure a court injunction to bar the IGG from implementing its recommendations. They did it, fought back and succeeded. All our hopes of winning against corruption diminished into stupor. This is another adorable commission report dangling redundantly in shelves.

Are Uganda’s commissions of inquiries intended to solve problems or to mollify bad situations?

Uganda Zzaabu!

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Gyagenda Semakula Zikusooka is a Kampala based Journalist/PR Practitioner