Members of Parliament on the Legal Committee have rebuked the Judiciary for the reckless handling of bail applications, with some Lawmakers wondering whether some Judicial Officers even have common sense or are even, deserving of titles; Worships, Lordship, Justices, yet all their actions are characterised by injustices like adjourning for two weeks, just to decide on a bail application.
The attacks were led by Hon Abdu Katuntu (Bugweri County) and Hon Medard Ssegona (Busiro East) during a meeting held with officials from Judiciary who had come to present their 2025/26 Ministerial Policy Statement.
“There is this simple thing called bail. And somebody adjourns a case for two weeks to grant bail. This is madness. This is purely madness. It is not professional. It’s not legal. It’s not common sense. Take a decision whether you grant or not. Simple. But you adjourn for two weeks to consider bail or even more, what are we doing, gentlemen? And some of you, we call you lordships. We call you worships. Why are you Justices when you cannot dispense justice?” argued Katuntu.
“You adjourn a bail application. What is so novel in a bail ruling? Someone tells you, I’m going to hear your case, but I will hear your bail application two weeks, three weeks away from today. You are defeating the Constitution. Because in the Constitution, everybody is entitled to be free, except where their accuser places on your table justification for restriction. Isn’t that the position of the law? Every innocent person is entitled to freedom. Now, you are aiding the State to incarcerate somebody who is innocent until two weeks when that person will come to justify his freedom. I think it’s unfair,” remarked Ssegona.
“Why do you charge a lot of money? Somebody has been arrested. Actually, somebody is a victim. The police arrest people, beat them up, we witnessed it in Kawempe recently. Someone has been boxed by the DPC, he comes to you with a swollen face, you remand him, then when you choose to hear, you ask a lot of money. These ordinary people, they pick on the streets, trying to survive. Why do you make bail so prohibitive?” Ssegoona asked.
Ssegoona also wondered if the Judiciary has a system that periodically reviews the decisions of these judicial officers and offered to be among those to review these decisions, to which Katuntu proposed the enactment of an independent law on bail applications.
“We should start thinking about going away from the guidelines and make a substantive legislation which sort of ties your hands. It’s very unfortunate because you want a judicial officer to have a discretion, to exercise it judiciously. But if we are faced with a fatal problem, cured by the law, then we go to that level because somehow you are not exercising that discretion properly,” remarked Katuntu.
The Judiciary was also castigated for the exorbitant bail fees imposed on suspects, with Katuntu accusing Judicial Officers of vulgarising and monetarising bail application, wondering if there are not other mechanisms that can be used to enforce the appearance of suspects in courts.
“Why has money been the factor of the bail? Money. Why don’t we think about other things, such as the attendance or the choose, other than it being economics? Because bail is about for you to secure his attendance. And we have vulgarised it, it is about money. It’s just vulgar, actually. Money, money, money. So me, who doesn’t have money, I have no opportunity because the biggest factor is money,” Katuntu said.
Lawmakers have also lashed out at the Judiciary for failing to put in place mechanism of alerting Advocates when Judicial Officers will be away in courts, which has seen many lawyers spend hours and resources travelling upcountry for court hearings, only to be told the Judicial Officers aren’t around to attend to their matters.
Leading the rebuke was Hon Jonathan Odur (Erute South) who wondered why the Judiciary continued to conduct business in total disregard of Ugandans resources and time.
Hon Jonathan Odur has further questioned the report by the Judiciary that 210 Judicial Officers were trained in Human Rights, wondering which human rights aspects they were trained in, because Uganda is awash with reports of sickly and tortured suspects appearing before courts, only for the Judicial Officers to send these suspects back to jail instead of hospitals.
He directed his question to Pius Bigirimana, Secretary to Judiciary, also raising concerns over the unequal distribution of cases amongst judges, where some are allocated more files than the others.
“I have seen you have trained 210 judicial officers in human rights. I would like to see the list of the judicial officers trained and what aspects of human rights were they trained on. Because from what we see, there seems to be probably very low regard for human rights among judicial officers. People who are tortured are brought before you, you don’t even recognize that. People who are sick are brought before you, you remand them further. So, what aspects of human rights are judicial officers trained on? Are there other special types of rights that we don’t know, that you find comfort in?” asked Hon Odur.
Pius Bigirimana, Secretary to Judiciary apologized on behalf of the Judiciary stating, “I want to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of the judiciary for some of the shortcomings that have been experienced. And some of them are systemic, others are for individuals in the judiciary. We do apologize. But we are not just seated, we are looking at all those areas that have got weaknesses and see how to fix them, both in the human resource and in the systems.”
Bigirimana however defended the monetization of bail saying it is currently the only available means saying, “For the time being, that’s what we have. But we shall benefit from members’ ideas. If you can come up with, for example, a proposal, you will have helped us. But for the time being, it is that.”
