Kampala – The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has in exercise of its mandate under Regulations 31 (1) (a) dismissed from Judicial Service two Judicial Officers and severely reprimanded one.
The dismissed Judicial officers include Grade I magistrate John Kavuma Muggaga and Grade II H/W Agnes Napio while Deputy Registrar H/W Deo Nizeyimana was severely reprimanded.
According to a statement issued on 13th March 2023, the Commission took this decision after having received complaints against the said Judicial Officers.
“The JSC Disciplinary Committee conducted hearings and the Judicial Officers submitted their defence,” reads part of the statement.
This publication understands that the judicial officers were dismissed after they were found guilty of corruption.
Its alleged that magistrate Napio while working at Nakawa Court solicited a bribe of Shs1m from Vincent Egesa as an inducement to reverse a custody ruling in a family case No. 251 of 2016; Linda Patience Vs Amam Vincent Egesa.
Magistrate Kavuma was accused of having solicited Shs4m to secure a formal notice of abandonment in a case of Uganda Vs Sekijjumba Victor where the accused was charged with murder and yet dropping of charges against a suspect is the mandate of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), not a judicial official.
For Registrar Nizeyimana, he allegedly relied on a faulty newspaper advert that contained only a gate to order for the sale of the property of one of the parties that appeared before him, which made it difficult for the complainants to identify that the property being advertised was theirs. He was also accused of having relied on a fatally flawed evaluation report to authorise the sale of a litigant’s property because the valuer in his report, stated that having failed to access the property, he instead relied on office data of similar properties to come up with the value.