By John V Sserwaniko
Under inquiry file number HQT/128/07/2017, the IGG Irene Mulyagonja has commenced investigations into allegations that Justice Kibula Elizabeth Kabanda of the High Court’s Criminal Division (of all people!) cheated her driver and bodyguard of their allowances. As part of this story, we share copies of summons the IGG has sent out to several judiciary employees calling them to appear as witnesses to give evidence against Justice Kibula. It all started on 13th March 2017 when Kibula’s driver Akantiorana Matiya and bodyguard Jimmy Eyou lodged their written complaint to the IGG accusing their boss of subjecting them to economic exploitation whereby she signed for and picked their allowances but never passed on the money. The money was part of the Shs29m the judiciary gave to Kibula as facilitation for Mpigi High Court criminal session that commenced on 18th September 2016. The duo claims that they were entitled to a daily allowance of Shs90,000 for 40 days which comes to a total of Shs3.6m but Kibula paid them for only 30 days yet the money was given to her by the judiciary.
MUBENDE DEBACLE:
Besides Mpigi, there was another Shs40m the judiciary advanced to Kibula for the Mubende High Court Criminal Session which ran between 31st January 2017 and 20th March 2017. Kibula admits as much but disputes the claim that she unduly denied the driver Matiya Akantiorana his allowances for 40 days amounting to Shs2.2m for the Mubende assignment. She also denies body guard Jimmy Ayou’s claim that she chewed his Shs180,000 for the Mubende duty equaling two nights’ allowances in the month of February 2017. Kibula says that the driver Akantiorana absconded from duty whereby on getting the money for Mubende, he requested to run to Kampala to pay school fees for his child but never came back prompting her to replace him with Peter Akabwai in whose favor she demands Akantiorana must refund the money he took and didn’t work for.
KAGOLE KIVUMBI SWINGS:
When Mulyagonja, herself a former judge, got the body guard and driver’s complaint she referred it to Secretary to Judiciary Kagole Kivumbi for verification. Sources say Mulyagonja did this because she couldn’t believe any reasonable judicial officer could cheat the poor driver and body guard in a manner Kibula was alleged to have done. Kivumbi constituted a team of internal auditors to investigate. Their undated report showed the driver and body guard had a point and that Kibula had a case to answer. Kivumbi then dully wrote to Kibula advising her to file her defense with the IGG as Mulyagonja had required her. In their report, the internal auditors of the judiciary found that the driver Akantiorana was away in Kampala doing errands to which Justice Kibula sent him, a claim the judge vehemently refutes.
KIBULA REGRETS:
In her written explanation to Kagole Kivumbi, Justice Kibula regrets ever recommending Akantiorana to the judiciary transport officer for recruitment. She says the man, who she now says is too unethical to be a driver for a judge, was recommended to her by a friend who was his relative. The friend begged Kibula to help out because jobless Akantiorana was grassing too much and eating dust with his family.
Kibula, who makes a detailed written submission on how there must be overhaul in the way judiciary drivers are recruited, now says Akantiorana turned out to be such a big problem to her as he often leaked her very private personal secrets to 3rd parties that aren’t authorized to know or become privy to such information. She now concludes that whereas Akantiorana is a qualified driver, he “lacks minimum ethical standards required of a professional driver when it comes to respecting superiors, confidentiality of information and restraint due to unguarded talk.” Without explaining, Kibula claims that Akantiorana many times subjected her to personal embarrassment. In one of her correspondences on the matter, Kibula recommends immediate termination of Matiya Akantiorana’s driver’s contract with the judiciary but critics wonder why Justice Kibuli never reported any discomfort with Akantiorana until the man came up demanding for what is due to him. In another of the very many correspondences on the matter, Justice Kibula contemptuously describes the driver Matiya Akantiorana and body guard Jimmy Eyou as “erratic and very disgruntled.” She also says they are too ignorant to work with the judiciary. Kagole Kivumbi’s internal audit report compliments the driver and body guard further when it discloses that their signatures were often forged to show they took money during the Mubende criminal session which they didn’t. This simply means Justice Kibula will have a lot of convincing to do to overcome the storm the IGG inquiry has already ignited broadly shinning a torch on the very unenviable plight many drivers go through in the service of Ugandan VIPs who tend to be very discourteous and exploitative. At some point, Kibula accuses the driver and bodyguard of conducting themselves in a manner that quite often put her personal security at a risk but she doesn’t explain why she never reported these breaches on her personal security until the guys became aggrieved and reported to the IGG.
SIMILAR PREDICAMENT:
Justice Kibula, who has since ran to the Constitutional Court seeking to stop the IGG’s inquiry, isn’t the only high profile figure mistreating drivers. It’s a very big problem with MPs who also chew the drivers’ monies almost on a monthly basis. It’s even worse with ministers one of whom (in the presence of this writer) beat up his driver in the Entebbe Road jam and chased him from the car. It was raining heavily and the Minister was coming from State House Entebbe and was rushing to Parliament to answer some queries that had been raised by MPs as a matter of national importance. Speaker Kadaga had previously been very furious about the same minister dodging Parliament. Hence the Minister was desperate to reach Parliament at earliest but there was characteristically a lot of jam on Entebbe road around Najjanankumbi into the city. This writer, a friend of the minister, was in the car. Instead of appreciating the jam problem, the way it was, the Minister blamed it on poor driving by his driver. It appears they had routinely had many other similar exchanges and the disrespect with which the driver defended himself that day seemed to indicate he was used to being attacked in the same way by his boss. The minister said “get out or else I beat you up.” In what left this writer feeling more embarrassed, the driver seemingly fed up of routine harassment over similar matters, replied “I will also beat you.” In the end the minister threw the driver out and drove himself to Parliament. Then there is old man Martin Aliker whose driver and body guard must daily drop him to his Kololo home for lunch and thereafter they have 20 minutes to walk to the Wandegeya slums, eat and rush back to return him to office. The wealthy old man from Acholi believes the two don’t deserve to eat at his home and as to where they eat or find cheap food is none of his business. All this illustrates one thing: that the predicament suffered by Justice Kibula’s driver Matiya Akantiorana (unfortunate as it is) isn’t his alone. It’s something wide spread. Perhaps it’s a problem of both the drivers and the Principals they carry if President Museveni’s past public utterances are anything to go by. He one time told a rally in Amelia Kyambadde’s Mawokota Mpigi how he often quarrels with his convoy drivers for over speeding and reckless driving. He was preaching about accidents that had become to rampant on Masaka road back then and squarely put the blame on erratic driving by especially guys who recklessly (his word) chauffer the VIPs who are very many on Masaka road.
WHO IS KIBULA:
Born Elizabeth Kibula Kabanda, the single mother of one girl, went to Kings College Budo in the late 1970s. She was at Budo for her entire senior secondary education whereafter she joined Makerere law school in the 1980s. She was a resident of Africa Hall and was always very introverted but hard working when it came to reading books. Her daughter, who is full of swag, goes to school abroad and she mothered her with fellow lawyer Mwesigwa Rukutana currently an MP and Deputy Attorney General. Kibula herself lives in her own posh house in Gaba Makindye Division and occasionally takes wine at home with her family members. But many colleagues at work notice her introverted nature and say she isn’t easily sociable. And the battle she has picked with the IGG, her driver and body guard could result into increased scrutiny into the mistreatment that many of our brothers-the drivers and body guards-endure at the hands of our equally erratic VIPs who quite often don’t behave with expected levels of decoram. In our subsequent coverage, we shall update this story with details of the court case Justice Kibula has filed seeking to halt IGG Irene Mulyagonja’s inquiry into her conduct. To comment on this & other Mulengera news stories, reach us on 0703164755!
