After applying to replace Bart Katureebe as Chief Justice in 2020, Alfonse Owiny-Dollo ran into Justice Frederick Martin Egonda-Ntende, then his colleague at the Court of Appeal. Owiny-Dollo, then Deputy Chief Justice, asked Justice Egonda-Ntende if he had applied to replace Katureebe as Chief Justice.
‘You want them to reject me once again,’ Justice Egonda-Ntende responded.
Later this year, Justice Egonda-Ntende, in accordance with Ugandan law that makes it mandatory for Court of Appeal justices to retire at 70, will hang up his wig.
The unassuming jurist last week used ‘a special sitting’ organised by the Judiciary as his sendoff to give a glimpse of what the public may have missed after he was shut out of the three top positions – Principal Judge, Deputy Chief Justice, and Chief Justice – in the judicial branch of government.
Citing the example of Alex Waiswa Mufumbiro, the National Unity Platform (NUP) publicist who has been in jail since last year alongside other Opposition activists, Justice Egonda-Ntende took a dig at the Judiciary for enabling the Executive to jail political opponents.
‘Multiple weeks ago, I read and viewed in both print and broadcast media the story of a couple of young children mourning and burying their mother alone without their surviving parent, the father held on some minor, obscure, and yet unproven charge in a subordinate court,’ Justice Egonda-Ntende said.
‘The charges don’t involve loss of life or threat to life, property, or reputation. The father was held in pretrial custody, denied bail, long past the constitutionally permitted period for denial of liberty. What society treats its children like this without questioning the persons caught up in such a criminal justice system?’ he added.
It has been 13 years since Justice Egonda-Ntende was appointed by President Museveni to the Court of Appeal, having served as Chief Justice of Seychelles for five years from 2009 to 2014.
When the jurist went to Parliament for vetting, members of the Appointments Committee felt that Justice Egonda-Ntende would be ‘underemployed’ if deployed to the Court of Appeal.
The committee members, led by then Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, asked President Museveni to reconsider the appointment since, in their view, Justice Egonda-Ntende was highly qualified for the Supreme Court. The plea fell on deaf ears.
In the coming years, several justices, including Ezekiel Muhanguzi, Percy Night Tuhaise, Paul Mugamba, Christopher Madrama, Catherine Bamugemereire, Ruby Opio Aweri, and Prof Lilian Ekirikubinza-Tibatemwa, who found Justice Egonda-Ntende at the Court of Appeal, would be promoted to the Supreme Court – but not him.
Overlooked
Justice Egonda-Ntende’s judicial career has been punctuated by near misses and political rejection by the regime that has been in power since 1986.
For instance, when he returned from Seychelles in 2012, where he had served as Chief Justice for three years, the Uganda Law Society (ULS) fronted his name to fill the position of Chief Justice following the retirement of Justice Benjamin Odoki.
President Museveni, however, unilaterally decided to extend Justice Odoki’s tenure as Chief Justice for two more years, prompting a Constitutional Court judgment that later rendered the move unconstitutional.
In the end, Justice Bart Katureebe, Museveni’s former Attorney General, was appointed Chief Justice, while Steven Kavuma, Museveni’s former junior Defence minister who had been serving as acting Chief Justice and acting Deputy Chief Justice, permanently took the Deputy Chief Justice slot.
When Justice Kavuma retired in 2017, Justice Egonda-Ntende gave it another shot, only for Museveni to appoint Justice Owiny-Dollo, his former junior minister in charge of the Northern Uganda Reconstruction Programme (NURP).
However, when Makerere University announced in 2023 that it was awarding Justice Egonda-Ntende an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in recognition of his contribution to Uganda’s legal fraternity, there was no stopping the praise.
‘Lawyers rarely agree on something, but on Dr Egonda-Ntende’s honorary doctorate, all have said this was the best pick anyone could make. You just have to read his judgments or attend his court. Congratulations, Doctor. We are proud of your achievements,’ lawyer Julius Galisonga said.
In his acceptance speech on January 29, 2024, Justice Egonda-Ntende reflected on his judicial journey.
‘Starting to serve in the Judiciary, I thought I knew much of what needed to be tackled from the outside. Once inside, I understood that legal acumen and zeal, obviously essential attributes of any judge, were insufficient to breathe life into the otherwise lifeless words of our Constitution and other laws,’ he said.
‘One had to double as a development practitioner, a change agent, to contribute to the transformation of the Judiciary into an effective and efficient body that renders justice to all without fear or favour, ill will or affection. I have dedicated the last 33 years to these ideals,’ he added.
Transformative
It is illuminating to unpack how Justice Egonda-Ntende has attempted to breathe life into Uganda’s Constitution, which some critics argue lost meaning following several regressive amendments.
‘Justice Egonda-Ntende has a lifetime track record of turning everyday cases into transformative judicial experiences not only for parties before court but for all court users and society at large, stretching as far back as the early 1990s,’ said Isaac Kimaze Ssemakadde, the exiled president of the Uganda Law Society.
One of the most talked-about cases involving Justice Egonda-Ntende was the first constitutional petition handled by the newly formed Constitutional Court, in which Gen David Tinyefuza, now Sejusa, insisted he had retired from the army.
‘There are several reasons, but the most important among them is that I feel I am unjustly being harassed over my testimony before the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Internal Affairs. To require me to appear before the High Command so that action is taken against me is rather too high-handed,’ Sejusa argued at the time.
In their judgment, Justices Seth Manyindo, then Deputy Chief Justice, Galdino Okello, Alice Mpagi Bahigeine, Patrick Tabaro, and Egonda-Ntende agreed that Sejusa ceased being an army officer when President Museveni appointed him presidential adviser.
‘Similarly, under the Public Service Standing Orders, a public servant is engaged on a full-time basis. It follows that an army officer cannot be a public servant at the same time. And so, when, in 1993, the President appointed the petitioner to a public service job as presidential adviser on contract terms, he thereby took him out of the Army,’ part of the judgment read.
The justices also noted that there was mounting evidence that the Army Council allowed officers to accept assignments in public service while remaining army officers.
‘This practice contravenes Section 5(1) of the NRA Statute,’ the judgment further stated.
The ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Kiss of death?
If in the Sejusa case Justice Egonda-Ntende was part of a panel, he stood alone in 2002 when he annulled the election of Amama Mbabazi, then widely seen as Museveni’s closest ally, as Kinkizi West Member of Parliament.
Justice Egonda-Ntende nullified Mbabazi’s victory after Garuga Musinguzi, who belonged to the Opposition pressure group Reform Agenda, proved the election had been marred by fraud, violence, and intimidation.
‘It is convenient to take the following three items together – violence and force were unleashed on the petitioner’s supporters by the UPDF, Presidential Protection Unit (PPU), and other security and governmental agencies to intimidate and stop them from voting for the petitioner, and instead vote for the respondent,’ he ruled.
Ruling against the political establishment appeared to place a target on Justice Egonda-Ntende’s back and effectively blocked any pathway to Uganda’s apex court.
That was despite the jurist – who holds a Master of Laws degree in Information Technology and Telecommunications Law from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, United Kingdom – earning recognition outside Uganda.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, he helped set up an independent judiciary in East Timor, where he served as a judge of the Court of Appeal.
When he later took his seat at the Court of Appeal, which doubles as the Constitutional Court, Justice Egonda-Ntende joined four other justices in ruling that police officers and state agents implicated in human rights violations should be held individually liable rather than shielding behind institutions.
Following the abuse of interim applications by litigants and advocates, Justice Egonda-Ntende, together with Justices Kenneth Kakuru and Elizabeth Musoke, also ruled that it was unconstitutional for a single judge to hear interim applications arising out of constitutional petitions.
They held that such applications should instead be heard by a panel of five Constitutional Court justices, sending shockwaves through the Judiciary.
Army in politics
Justice Egonda-Ntende once had an opportunity to kick the military out of Parliament after Ellady Muyambi, a private citizen, filed a petition arguing that soldiers should not sit in Parliament under a multiparty political system.
The five justices who heard the appeal, however, held differing views.
‘From the foregoing, it is clear that the Constituent Assembly was alive to the contentions raised by the petitioner. However, it recommended that it was important to have army representation in Parliament,’ Justice Egonda-Ntende, who wrote the lead judgment, explained.
‘It is also clear that the Constituent Assembly intended for the army to be represented in Parliament during both systems of government [Movement and multiparty]. It was never intended by the framers of the Constitution for army representation in Parliament to be in abeyance during the multiparty system,’ he concluded.