Meet Justice Odoki, who served Amin and saved the country

Bumpy road to the summit. “You see, you had two alternatives, run out of the country or stay and accept to serve. And I stayed.” These were some of the words retiring Justice Benjamin Odoki used in an exhilarating interview with the Sunday Monitor’s Emmanuel Gyezaho over a wide-range of issues, including respect for Judiciary, incursion of the High Court by the Black Mambas and the crises he has handled while at the helm of Judiciary:-

There is this case of Shs13 billion that has got Ugandans pretty angry.
There is no problem. The judges will handle it. You see the registrar is the taxing officer. He does the first preliminary assessment. If you are not satisfied with the registrar, you make a reference to a judge or in the Supreme Court it will be a reference to three judges; you’ve got a reference to one judge, if you are not satisfied, you get a reference to three judges. There is a system of correction for those errors.

Some Ugandans feel you haven’t done enough to exert the independence and influence of the Judiciary. In fact some accuse you of not standing up to the Executive. How do you respond to that criticism?
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I agree that I have not done what they wanted me to do. I am for achieving results. I don’t speak to the gallery. My style of administration doesn’t speak to the gallery. When I was director at LDC there was no strike, there was no acrimonious failure. When I was chairman of disciplinary committee at Makerere, I dismissed two guild presidents. I don’t think you have had anybody who has done that. There was a lot of order. We changed Makerere’sNorthcote Hall to Nsibirwa. We restored discipline at that university. I was member of council. So you see me looking very humble, hmmm…laughs out loud…but in terms of discipline…
When I want to talk to the President, I don’t have to tell the press. No. When I went to the President when there was a strike, I didn’t call the press but the President wrote a letter regretting the incident. Where has the President written a letter to the Chief Justice regretting the incident of what he has done? Where? And how was that obtained? By talking to the press? No. I just went to State House and said Your Excellency let us resolve this issue once and for all but the Judiciary should be allowed to work without interference and he said yes, he agreed.
How have I been able to achieve all these things? Where has the Executive interfered? We have made decisions here, sometimes which are actually against government. Where has it interfered?

Well, in 2005, security operatives besieged the precincts of the High Court and re-arrested freed suspects in what later came to be known as the Black Mamba fiasco.
Well, yeah, that happened but you wanted me to do what? Resign? I think some people said you resign because Black Mamba had come here. But let me tell you, if I had been here, the situation would have been different. If I had been in the country, the situation would have been different.
You cannot come and play around here when am here. Have you heard any fujo [chaos] when am around here? When I am here, I am in charge. And you cannot command my judges. No. You can write to me yes but have you seen any judge who has been commanded to pass a different decision? They are passing decisions as they like, like the one you are complaining about. But most people when they see a decision against an opposition leader, they think the government has interfered. But which government, and who? Would the President talk to a magistrate in Nabweru or in Jinja? That is below his dignity.

What would you have done to prevent this brazen act?
I would have told them get off. If I tell the commander of the armed forces or the Inspector General of Police to remove these people from my chambers you think they can refuse the order? Let me tell you this, the Judiciary doesn’t stop anybody being arrested after he has been released. But you cannot do so on the premises of the Judiciary. Go to the market; go to the road, whatever. The precincts of the courts are sanctified, they are sacred. It’s like an embassy; you don’t go to the American embassy and arrest somebody.

But they did.
I came back the following day, met the judges and then went to see the President. Of course if I hadn’t come immediately, the situation would have been different. It’s the handling, the way you handle a situation is different. I am not just a professional lawyer, I am a manager. I have run many institutions, so I know how to handle crisis situations.

What crises have you handled?
There was a situation here, the referendum case where the judges at the Court of Appeal said there was no government here; that the Referendum Act was unconstitutional and there was a riot. I made a statement immediately and said there is no constitutional crisis, the Judiciary will handle it.

I guess there’d be a vacuum?
The military would just come in. It is as simple as that.

So you averted that situation?
Many situations I have averted but I cannot tell you. (Laughs out loud)

You can tell, surely, can’t you?
I will tell when I have left. But there are many situations and we use common sense. The law is not as ass, as people say. The law should be used to advance the interests of the people at a given time. If you don’t harmonise, you don’t create peace and instead you cause disharmony. That is where there’s a problem with the law about demonstrations. There is nothing against demonstrations but to what extent do you allow it to become violent and destructive. That is the issue; the balance. There is nothing wrong with demonstrations and so on, even riots, sometimes, as a form of protest. The law says you may peacefully assemble. You have to emphasise peaceful assembly.

In the last part of the interview that will run tomorrow - Monday 22 - in the Daily Monitor, Justice Odoki talks about the kind of person he would like to succeed him as chief justice and also advises Dr Kizza Besigye to emulate other politicians in Africa. He for instance says Raila Odinga of Kenya came much closer than him while others like the President of Zambia, Michael Sata, tried many times. “There was Abdoulaye Wade; he had been in the opposition for a very long time. So who knows?”

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Odoki’s judicial journey from 1969
Odoki began his career in 1969 as state attorney attached to public prosecutions. He will be remembered for having spearheaded the amalgamation of the 1995 constitution. He is mostly referred to as the father of the 1995 constitution. He presided over two presidential petitions in which former Forum for Democratic Change president Kizza Besigye challenged the election of incumbent President Yoweri Museveni in 2001 and 2006. Born in Busia, eastern Uganda on March 23, 1943, Mr Odoki went to Kings College Budo for secondary education. He enrolled at Dar es Salaam University where he studied law. He was a year ahead of the late Eriya Kategaya, the late James Wapakabulo who were studying law and President Museveni who had enrolled for a degree in political science. A father of four children, Mr Odoki is the 10th chief justice since independence.