In Uganda, the hearing of a presidential petition is often regarded as one of the most significant cases that a Chief Justice will ever handle.
Justice Samuel Wako Wambuzi, who made history by serving as the topmost person in Uganda’s Judiciary three times-from 1972 to 1975, 1979 to 1980, and 1986 to 2001-never had the opportunity to preside over a Supreme Court bench that would decide on a presidential petition.
His successor, Justice Benjamin Odoki, was responsible for overseeing two consecutive presidential petitions filed by Opposition doyen Kizza Besigye, challenging the electoral victory of his former boss, President Museveni.
In both cases, Odoki ruled in favour of Museveni, reinforcing the belief that a Chief Justice may ultimately be hesitant to rule against the individual who appointed him to the position. In fact, in 2001, despite ruling against Besigye, Odoki had found that indeed Museveni, backed by the security apparatus, had rigged elections.
‘The evidence adduced on ballot stuffing is credible, although some is exaggerated and based on hearsay. There is sufficient evidence to support the allegation. My finding is that the petitioner [Besigye] has proved to my satisfaction by the evidence adduced that the second respondent’s agents [EC] failed to comply with the provisions and principles of Section 30 (7) of the Act and that there was a ballot stuffing as this infringed the principles of fairness and transparency,’ Odoki ruled.
Odoki also accepted Besigye’s evidence of security operatives intimidating his agents, describing the evidence as ‘detailed, consistent and credible’.
‘The denials and explanations in the respondents’ evidence have not sufficiently rebutted the various allegations of intimidation made by the petitioner. It is not disputed that the army was deployed throughout the country at the time of voting. It is also not disputed that the PPU [Presidential Protection Unit, now known as Special Forces Command (SFC)] was stationed in Rukungiri throughout the period of the election campaign and during the polling,’ Odoki ruled.
‘I find that the highest concentration of intimidation, violence, and harassment took place in Rukungiri, Kanungu, and Kamwenge. The intimidation interfered with the petitioner’s campaigns in those districts. In Rukungiri and Kanungu, it was perpetuated mainly by the PPU. In Kamwenge, it was done by UPDF soldiers.’
The intimidation of agents and supporters, Odoki said, extended to closing branch offices and tearing of posters, dispersing of consultative meetings and rallies, abduction, arrest, and causing injury or death to agents and supporters.
‘On polling day, intimidation consisted of ordering voters to vote for the first respondent [Museveni] and harassing the petitioner’s [Besigye] polling agents,’ Odoki said.
Odoki’s successor, Justice Bart Katureebe, presided over the Supreme Court bench that heard the 2016 petition filed by Museveni’s former prime minister, John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, who had turned into his competitor in the 2016 presidential petition.
The result was the same, only that, unlike in the previous petitions, where a couple of justices dissented on Katureebe’s bench, which had nine judges, all agreed to dismiss Mbabazi’s petition. When he retired in 2020, Katureebe was replaced by Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, who is retiring in January.
It was in 2021 when Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine, filed a petition, challenging Museveni’s 2021 presidential election victory. Justice Owiny-Dollo and his seven-member bench, however, weren’t given a chance to determine the petition because Kyagulanyi decided to withdraw the petition before the hearing could take place. The decision was taken on the grounds that the judges had allegedly not only exhibited apparent bias, but also had personal relations with Museveni.
Kisaakye fallout
Kyagulanyi’s petition came against the backdrop of a public fallout between the rest of the bench, led by Owiny-Dollo, and their colleague, Justice Esther Kisaakye. There were accusations and counter-accusations, with justices accusing Kisaakye of refusing to share her rulings, contrary to an unwritten rule of Uganda’s apex court. On her part, the now exiled Kisaakye accused Owiny-Dollo of confiscating her files.
The fallout resulted in Museveni’s institution of a tribunal to investigate Kisaakye, a move that the judge has since rubbished as illegal. In her dossiers on social media, Justice Kisaakye wrote to Justice Owiny-Dollo thus: ‘Your failure to admit your lies later misled President Museveni, the President of Uganda to (a) defer acceptance of my early retirement from the Supreme Court of Uganda in October 2023; and (b) to appoint an unconstitutional tribunal of inquiry in February 2025, to inquire into the very statements you had already admitted in April 2021.’
Owiny-Dollo, who represented Ogago County both in the Constituent Assembly (CA), which midwifed the current Constitution, and the Sixth Parliament, started his journey as a judge in 2008 when he was appointed as a judge of the High Court. In his seven-year tenure as a High Court judge, he served as resident judge of the High Court in Fort Portal; he headed the Execution and Bailiffs Division of the High Court; and he also had a stint at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the High Court.
Terrorism case
After seven years at the High Court, in 2015, Owiny-Dollo was promoted to the Court of Appeal. However, he couldn’t take his seat at the court immediately because he was still tied up at the High Court Criminal Division, hearing a terrorism case in which 13 men were accused of killing 76 people in twin bombings in Kampala.
In one of the most high-profile cases in Uganda’s history, Owiny-Dollo, denounced the terror attacks as ‘the execution of a heinous plan before finding eight of the suspects guilty, and five not guilty’.
Those that Justice Owiny-Dollo convicted, thus handing them a life imprisonment sentence, included Issa Ahmed Luyima, a Ugandan; Hussein Hassan Agade, a Kenyan; Edris Magondu, a Kenyan; and Mohmed Ali Mohmed, a Kenyan.
The others-Hassan Haruna Luyima, a Ugandan, and Selemi Hijar Nyamandondo, a Tanzanian-are serving 50 years in prison. Those that Owiny-Dollo let go included Yahya Suleiman Mbuthia, a Kenyan; Mohamed Hamid Suleiman, a Kenyan; Dr Ismail Kalule, a Ugandan; Omar Awadh Omar, a Kenyan; and Abubakari Batemyetto, a Ugandan.
In acquitting the five, Owiny-Dollo dismissed charges of belonging to a terrorist organisation, concluding that al-Shabaab, which the suspects were linked to, isn’t a designated terror organisation in the Ugandan law books.
Age limit case
If the terror trial that Owiny-Dollo presided over was satisfactory to both the State and the defence-since neither side appealed-it had no direct political implications. However, the next significant case handled by the former junior minister of the Northern Uganda Reconstruction Programme in Museveni’s Cabinet had major political ramifications.
Once he wore the gown and the judicial robes of the Court of Appeal, which serves at the Constitutional Court, Owiny-Dollo-who has a Master’s of Arts Degree in Conflict Resolution from Bradford University-was quickly appointed as Deputy Chief Justice in 2017, replacing the scandal-ridden Justice Steven Kavuma, who had retired.
Being the Deputy Chief Justice meant that Owiny-Dollo had to lead the panel that heard the petition that challenged the move by the ruling party, National Resistance Movement (NRM) legislators, to remove presidential age limits from the Constitution. If the NRM MPs hadn’t edited out the age limit, Museveni, who shot his way to power in 1986, would have ended his presidency in 2021.
Eliminating the age limits gave Museveni the all clear to rule until he dies, something that Owiny-Dollo, together with justices Remmy Kasule, Elizabeth Musoke and Cheborion Barishaki, didn’t find to be unconstitutional. Only Justice Kenneth Kakuru, who has since passed on, found it to be unconstitutional.
Again, by ruling in favour of upholding this amendment, which many said was the last nail in the coffin of the Ugandan Constitution, Owiny-Dollo had lent credence to the narrative that the judges can’t go against Museveni when it matters most.
‘That is for everyone to see when the stakes are high, the judges can’t go against Museveni. That has been demonstrated through presidential petitions and the presidential age limit petition,’ constitutional lawyer Peter Walubiri said.
Military tribunals
After the age limit judgement, Owiny-Dollo was promoted to replace Katureebe as Uganda’s 10th Chief Justice, setting a centre stage for him to make his views known on whether it’s constitutional to try civilians in the General Court Martial (GCM) or not.
The military tribunal has, for several years, become a key cog in the political machinery of the NRM regime. As the 2021 elections were approaching, the Ugandan government took a drastic step of gazetting the red beret-which is one of the symbols of the Opposition National Unity Platform (NUP)-as part of the UPDF insignia. Section 160 (c) of the same Act stipulated that any person who receives any military clothing or equipment would be sentenced to life imprisonment.
With that, armed men in plain clothes, moving in vans infamously referred to as drones, abducted and took many NUP supporters to unknown places where they were held incommunicado. A handful of them were paraded before the dreaded court martial, where charges of being in possession of government stores (i.e. a red beret) were preferred against them.
The Constitutional Court, upon a petition filed by Micheal Kabaziguruka, ruled in 2021 that trying civilians in the court martial was illegal. The General Court Martial was, therefore, deemed to be a specialised court set up by Parliament, with Justice Kakuru noting that it ‘clearly is not part of the Judiciary’. It is part of, he added, ‘the Executive arm of government established under Chapter 12 of the Constitution, which provides for the country’s defence and national security’.
Kakuru further noted thus: ‘Several attempts by the Executive to place the General Court Martial on the same footing as courts of judicature has, in my view, originated confusion and discord among jurists, legal practitioners, and scholars. It’s simply trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.’
The judgement couldn’t be implemented following an appeal by the Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka, who insisted that it was constitutional for civilians to be tried in military courts, which have no regard to civil procedures. Kiwanuka’s boss, Museveni, had made it clear that the GCM is critical to his politics when he gave the military tribunal a Kinyankore name-Ekyokyeero (reinforcement).
With Besigye and his aide Obeid Kamulegeya were charged at the GCM, pressure was mounted on Owiny-Dollo to pronounce himself on the matter. This as the Supreme Court in January of 2025 ruled on the constitutionality of military tribunals.
‘Anyone without any professional training can become a judge in army courts, which is akin to picking any lawyer in town and taking them in theatre to operate patients, yet the lawyer might not know the difference between a kidney and liver,’ Owiny-Dollo said in the last judgement of a judicial career that has spanned 17 years.
Taking stock
Though Owiny-Dollo ordered that all files at the GCM should be taken to the High Court’s Criminal Division, the State didn’t fully comply with the order.
NUP supporters charged in 2021 at the GCM-such as Yasin Ssekitoleeko, alias Machete; Musa Kavuma; Anthony Agaba, alias Bobi Young; Umar Kato; Abdallah Gibusiwa; Sharif Kalanzi; Abdallah Kintu; Abdallah Bongole; Gaddafi Mugumya, alias Gen Gadaffi, and Grace Wakabi, alias Smart wa Bobi-are still languishing in jail.
Instead, the NRM regime reacted to the landmark Supreme Court judgement by quickly passing through an amendment in Parliament that reinstated the GCM, which is now headed by Brig Richard Tukachungurwa.
As private lawyers get ready to go through another process of challenging the newly constituted GCM, should the matter end up in the country’s apex court, the Chief Justice’s gavel will be in the grasp of someone else.
As Uganda’s 10th Chief Justice prepares to walk into the sunset on January 18, 2026, nearly a year after superintending over the landmark decision on the GCM, in an interview, he told this writer that no one can question his impartiality.
‘I don’t know why people doubted me because nobody can influence me. There shouldn’t have been any doubts on that matter,’ he said.
This, however, was not the impression that Bobi Wine gave in February of 2021 when he withdrew his petition at the Supreme Court, challenging the re-election of Museveni nearly a month earlier.
Bobi Wine said thus: ‘The Supreme Court said, we could only submit, in this our petition, for 30 minutes. Now, that was clear, one, the Supreme Court did not want this matter to attract so much attention. So, for that matter, for the reasons we’ve given above, we have decided to withdraw from their court. The courts are not independent; it’s clear that these people are working for Mr Museveni.’
Little wonder, observers say, that the legacy of Uganda’s 10th Chief Justice will, in many respects, be mixed. Some contend that the verdict that Francis Gimara, a former president of the Uganda Law Society (ULS), passed during this year’s Benedicto Kiwanuka memorial lecture held on September 19, speaks volumes.
Gimara expressed, ‘a growing recent concern that the courts are losing’ their bravery on Chief Justice Owiny-Dollo’s watch.
To which the jurist responded: ‘One could have talked of courage if it were true that out there is someone, for instance, the Executive, the head of State, the minister of Justice, the Attorney General was always breathing on my neck from behind and say, ‘you must write judgment in this case to the right or to the left’. Then maybe one would have said I had the courage to defy the President, to defy the Attorney General, to defy the minister of Justice.’