Don’t use legal terms, UPDF commander tells officers
Officiating. Col Moses Wandera (right) hands over a certificate to one of UPDF officers who completed one month training at Gadaffi Baracks in Jinja on Friday. PHOTO BY TAUSI NAKATO
What you need to know:
- Issue. Col Wandera says many officers do not understand the legal jargons learned officers use.
- He said although they have not yet fully won the battle, they have doctors, lawyers, ICT experts and engineers in the force.
JINJA. The Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) director of prosecutions, Col Moses Wandera, has asked legal officers to simplify their language while in the field.
Col Wandera made the remarks while officiating at the pass out of 17 legal officers at the UPDF Legal Training Centre at Gadhafi Barracks in Jinja last week.
“You think a man is going to respect you when you start advising him using legal jargons? Try to simplify your language. Even if you don’t know Swahili, use Luganda which is being spoken by many Ugandans or any other language he or she understands,” Col Wandera said:
Challenges
He also disclosed that although they have tried to professionalise the army, they are faced with a number of challenges such as lack of capacity to verify the academic documents submitted by some of the candidates during the recruitment exercise. “Although we set a standard that a person must have a minimum qualification of Senior Six, we don’t have the capacity to know whether that person inherited papers of his deceased relatives or not,” he noted.
Col Wandera explained that during the 1981-1985 NRA liberation war, although they had lawyers like Jim Muhwezi, Henry Tumukunde, Noble Mayombo, David Sejusa and Amanya Mushega, many officers lack necessary skills to offer legal advice and therefore need such training.
As a way forward, he urged the graduates to always use simple words and interprete legal terms for the layman.
The acting commander of the legal training centre, Capt Samuel Onapa, said it has been a long journey to professionalise the army since NRA was changed to UPDF.
He said although they have not yet fully won the battle, they have doctors, lawyers, ICT experts and engineers in the force.
What others say
“Someone can make a statement without making research; he is in the legal fraternity and not in the command structure so he may have based his discussion on what he used to know after the NRA in the 90s but remember since 2002, recruitment in UPDF has been in quota system and you must have a minimum of Senior Four. We have since trained and we don’t think we still have majority of such commanders in our fold,’’ Lt Col Deo Akiki, the deputy Army Spokesperson, said.
