FDC-Katonga blame Justice Musa Ssekaana for their woes

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Forum for Democratic Change-FDC Katonga faction headed by the Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago has criticized High Court Judge Musa Ssekaana for mistreating them when they appeared before him seeking an interim order stopping the delegates’ conference of the Najjanankumbi faction.

Last week the Najjanankumbi faction held a delegates’ conference in Kampala where they renewed the term of party President Patrick Amuriat Oboi and and Secretary General Nathan Nandala Mafabi.

Speaking today at their Katonga Road-based offices, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda their spokesperson said Ssekaana who declined to grant the orders arguing that the applicants had filed their application late, treated them as though they were second-class citizens.

“We know judges are given a lot of power under the Constitution, but this power must be exercised judiciously. We are not happy with the way, Judge Musa Ssekaana treated us when we appeared before him. He made us wait for two hours because he had fixed the matter at midday but didn’t hear from us until 2 p.m.

When hearing of the interim application began, he told us he had other commitments and wanted to be out of his office by 3 p.m. He gave us 20 minutes which he said if we didn’t want to utilise, he could push the matter forward,” Ssemujju said.

“He literary walked away from us and announced that his ruling would be delivered by email in the evening. We waited until we went to sleep without his email ruling. We were told the following morning that he had actually delivered his ruling at midnight. His conduct makes it look like a favour by judges to hear cases. We will raise this matter formally to him and to his supervisors. This is not just for us but for everybody seeking justice in our court system,” Ssemujju added.

He added that they also have a problem with another judge Esta Nambayo who handled an earlier application that was filed by a team allied to Nandala and Amuriat. These had sought orders for the court to grant the temporary injunction against an extraordinary delegates conference organized by FDC chairman Wasswa Birigwa.

The court gave the orders to stop the meeting after Nandala and Amuriat who had been sued consented to the request. This, Ssemujju said, was fraud because Birigwa who was the convener of the meeting was never a party to the suit.

“Nandala and Amuriat who have become masters of forgery and fraud sued themselves through their agents. Any Judge worth the title should have observed that those who went to court and those they took were one and the same. That is why all that happened before Judge Nambayo was raising the case and immediate consent by the other party,” Ssemujju said.

The Katonga group suspects that the court record was tampered with because the lawyers representing Nandala/Amuriat and their agents had applied to have Ambassador Wasswa Birigwa joined in this case. It is on the basis of this record that Birigwa prepared a defence which was thrown out by Nambayo after the matter was brought to her attention.

He, however, added that despite the setbacks, they are going to continue pursuing legal avenues to ensure that Nandala and Amuriat are removed from the leadership of the FDC because, according to Semujju, the meeting, the first of its kind in the 18 years of FDC, was illegal under the party Constitution.

Articles 23 and 28 of The FDC Constitution state that the FDC National Executive Committee (NEC) shall be elected by the National Delegates Conference convened and chaired by the party Chairman. The current Chairman Wasswa Biriggwa was not part of the faction that convened the delegate’s conference.

“What Nandala and Amuriat have done is to make their followers blindly believe that the legality of their October 6, meeting and their purported election has been determined and certified by the court. The Court process has just begun. It might be longer than they think and have been made to believe. This is therefore to inform the FDC delegates who instructed us to take this matter to Court on September 19, that the process to have this matter determined has not been concluded,” Ssemujju said.

FDC descended into chaos after the Katonga group accused the Najjanankumbi group of accepting money from President Museveni that was used in the 2021 general elections.

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