Settling land disputes shouldn’t take decades
About three weeks ago, a land dispute case that had taken 25 years in court was finally settled.
The case in question was Mr Edward Musoloza vs Mr Geofrey Nganda, Mr Ephraim Kaweesa and Mr William Batibwe.
It was before the first court of instance, meaning the matter had not even gone onto appeal before a higher court.
Mr Musoloza, who had filed his matter on July 21, 1995, finally received justice after 25 years of waiting as the case was decided in his favour by Justice Margaret Mutonyi at Mukono High Court.
But after waiting for 25 years, was that justice really? It was not and this case clearly brings out the common saying that justice delayed is justice denied.
Of course, in 25 years a lot of things would have happened. Mr Musoloza was, among others, illegally deprived of using his 25 acres of land that is located near Mabira Forest and the profits that would have accrued therein, and he incurred huge legal fees that he kept on paying his lawyers.
We think the Judiciary should pick interest in this matter and find out what the causes that could have led to this delayed were as it fights the staggering case backlog.
But some of the possible causes of delay could have been transferring judicial officers before completing the case, laxity in their supervision, corruption such as hiding of files and case backlog.
In his speech during New Year’s celebrations, outgoing Chief Justice Bart Katureebe said there were 146,994 cases in court as of January this year, with an average of 197,067 new cases registered each year.
The average period a case spends in our courts now stands at three years, according to The Justice, Law and Order Sector (JLOS) annual report 2018/19.
In some developed judiciaries like Singapore, when a case stays in the justice system for more than eight months without being disposed of, it is declared a backlog and the judge handling it has to explain the delay.
We, therefore, appeal to the Judiciary to study the Musoloza case to ensure that such is never repeated.
