Protests as Judge adjourns UMSC case to November

Members of the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council (UMSC) general assembly but allied to Sheikh Abdallah Ssemambo protested outside the civil division of the High Court in Kampala, after Justice Douglas Singiza granted a longer adjournment to the case in which they want to dethrone the Mufti, Sheikh Shaban Ramathan Mubaje.

The parties in the case on Wednesday, June 16, appeared before Justice Singiza who ordered the lawyers of the two warring UMSC factions to file written submissions regarding all the applications including those that had been determined by Justice Farida Shamilah Bukirwa Ntambi, who previously handled the case before it was re-allocated to him.

This was after Dr Singiza declined to entertain a preliminary objection raised by Luyimbazi Nalukoola, the lawyer for the pro-Ssemambo group led by Yudaya Babirye, Burhan Samanya and Hussein Simbwa. Nalukoola had argued that the judge is not clothed with jurisdiction to hear the case.

Justice Singiza consolidated all the applications and promised to determine the matters altogether, sparking a bitter exchange. After court, Nalukoola accused Justice Singiza of refusing to give him an audience to make out his case.

“The judge is new in this case. We wanted to raise a preliminary point of law that the applicants have no cause of action but he has elected to consolidate the applications in the case without hearing us and directed us to file written submission which is not right,” Nalukoola said.
Musa Kabega, one of the UMSC lawyers that Bukirwa Ntambi disqualified from the case, attended Singiza’s court on behalf of the pro-Mubaje group.

Last month, the Principal Judge Dr Flavian Zeija withdrew the case from Ntambi and reallocated it to Singiza after Sheikh Mubaje raised a complaint against Justice Bukirwa Ntambi.

Zeija has since been dragged to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) by Issa Gule who wants the commission to investigate him for alleged abuse of office.