For a number of months, many court users especially journalists and lawyers have been asking the whereabouts of soft-spoken High Court Civil Division Judge Dr. Andrew Bashaija.
The mighty Grapevine can authoritatively report that the controversial judicial officer is on forced leave.
Multiple credible sources intimated to us that the appointing authority who is also the President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni recently rang the Principal Judge who is also the head of the High Court and directed him with immediate effect to remove Bashaija from the Uganda Courts.
“The man is on forced leave, Mzee (Museveni) called the principal judge and told him that he no longer wants him in his courts,” one of the top judicial officers authoritatively told this reporter.
He explained that Museveni was very bitter with Bashaija’s decision to award Shs180bn to the city pastor and also the director of DMW Uganda Limited Daniel Walugembe.
Bashaija awarded Walugembe Shs180bn after government through NEMA canceled his licenses to mine sand in wetlands of Lwera in Masaka district.
Sources revealed that the president was very bitter after a number of top government officials including the Speaker of parliament Rebecca Kadaga wrote to him complaining about Bashaija.
Shockingly, Pastor Walugembe stubbornly petitioned the Court of Appeal challenging the Shs180bn awarded to him by Bashaija claiming that it was too little compared to the huge amount he invested in this business before NEMA cancelled his license.
The Attorney General challenged Bashaija’s appeal.
Sources further told this website that Museveni told Zeija that the Lwera issue is not the first complaint he received on Bashaija’s unrealistic decisions, he cited other incidences like the complaint from Justice Catherine Bamugemereire when she was still chairing the Commission of Inquiry into land matters, Bamugemereire petitioned Museveni and the former Chief Justice Bart Magunda Katureebe complaining about Bashaija’s orders that always frustrated the work of her commission.
Other people included Local Entrepreneur and proprietor of Green Lounge, Bar and Restaurant in Muyenga Ponsiano Kwizera who cried foul following repeated attempts by his neighbor Justice Andrew Bashaija to have his business closed.
He reported that Bashaija wanted him to leave the place so that he expands his apartments that sit on plot 1652, in Ministers Village, Zzimwe road Muyenga Kampala.
Efforts to speak to Justice Bashaija were futile since his known phone numbers were not going through.
However, Ssalongo Solomon Muyita, the Senior Communications Officer of the Judiciary told theGrapevine that the judge is on a normal leave not a forced one.
When this website checked on the judiciary website, it indicated that Bashaija is currently not deployed anywhere but just on leave.
Another judicial officer told this website that because Museveni doesn’t have powers to send a judicial officer on forced leave, what he had to do after receiving a report from the Judicial Service Commission pining the judge on breaking the judicial service standards, was to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate the troubled judicial officer.
Nzeija first removed Bashaija from the office of the head of the High Court Civil Division and replaced him with a junior judge Micheal Elubo something many said was a demotion.
By Sengooba Alirabaki
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