MPs Seek to Restrict Prosecution to only DPP & IGG

Parliament has granted the Busiki County Member of Parliament, Hon Paul Akamba leave to introduce a private member's bill, in which he is seeking to amend the Magistrates Courts Act, in order to end criminal private prosecution in Uganda. The amendment looks to have it reserved for only the state i.e the Director of Public Prosecutions DPP and Inspectorate of Government.

Hon. Akamba argued that there is no individual better positioned to constitute any prosecution in Uganda than the DPP & IG because Government sets aside significant resources to enable these entities carry out their roles and these entities have employed a significant number of public prosecutors in different parts of the country to ably handle prosecutions.

The motion was seconded by the Bugiri Municipality MP, Hon Asuman Basalirwa, who argued that the framers of the constitution, did envisage that matters of prosecution are a preserve of the DPP & although there are provisions under the same constitution that allow private prosecutions, but ultimately, the same constitution allows the DPP to take over all private prosecutions.

“No wonder, in the history of the country, we haven’t seen a private prosecution successfully concluded without it being taken over by the DPP. It is also true that this particular provision, Section 42 is likely to create a miscarriage of justice where a judicial officer is empowered to investigate a matter, but also creates a possibility of that judicial officer to hear a matter they investigated. It shouldn’t have been the intention of the constitution to create such a scenario," Basalirwa said.

In the June 2022 Auditor General’s report, it was revealed that the DPP's backlog of cases pending prosecution increased by 68,974 from 55,342 to 124,316.