Museveni pardons 200 convicts

President Museveni has pardoned the former Permanent Secretary of Public Services Jimmy Lwamafa and 199 other convicts, most of whom have been serving jail terms less than 10 years and not of capital nature.

President Museveni used his prerogative of mercy powers given to him under the Constitution to pardon the convicts a fortnight  ago, majorly on health and humanitarian grounds.

“In exercise of the power vested in me under Article 121 (1) a of the Constitution of the Re[public of Uganda, 1995 as amended and on the advice of the Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, I hereby grant pardon to the persons below on public health and humanitarian grounds,” read in part the instrument of pardon signed off by President Museveni dated August 20.

Lwamafa was serving a seven and nine-year jail terms in two but related corruption pension scam cases at Murchison Bay, Luzira prison, on the outskirts of Kampala City.

The spokesman of the Uganda Prisons Services, Mr Frank Baine, said the pardoned convicts would be released starting today.

“In June this year, we submitted 1,800 names of prisoners. These are the people that had qualified to be pardoned. The categories for prisoners whose names are submitted for pardon include all petty offenders who have served more than 50 percent of their sentences. [These included] all prisoners on death row that have exhausted their appeal process,” Mr Baine said yesterday.

President Museveni last pardoned convicts in July 2022 where 79 prisoners benefitted.

In April 2020, he also pardoned 833 prisoners. The 2020 presidential pardon was intended to decongest the prisons to avoid the spread of Coronavirus.

Mr Baine said all elderly convicts who  have finished three quarters of their sentence, the suckling mothers and pregnant women jailed for petty offences who have finished more than a quarter of their sentence, the terminally sick who have finished 50 percent of their offences and all the capital offenders who are remaining with less than six months of their sentence are the ones who are pardoned.

Among the beneficiaries of the most recent presidential pardon is Joseph Magombe, a former MTN worker, who was convicted alongside four others of fraud in which the telecom company lost more than Shs3b in 2015. Magombe and his accomplices were sentenced to nine years in prison.   

Vicky Abiria, a maid, convicted of feeding her master’s child with urine at a home in Namugongo, Kira Municipality, on November 8, 2020, was also pardoned by the President.  She was serving four years and six months in prison.

The President cut short Charles Okello’s remaining two-year jail term by pardoning him. Okello was convicted of stealing a motor vehicle in January 2018 in Kampala City.

He was sentenced to seven years and also ordered to compensate the victim Shs46m within six months after the judgement. He appealed the sentence but it was dismissed by an appellant court.

Godfrey Lubyayi, a mechanic, also benefited from the presidential pardon. He and others were convicted of assaulting Assistant Superintendent of Police Consulate Kasule during the November 2020 riots after the arrest of the National Unity Platform president Robert Kyagulanyi.

Majority of the pardoned convicts were serving their sentences in upcountry prisons such as Arua, Hoima, Kiruhura, Soroti, Kyenjojo, Bulaula, Ntwetwe, Mbarara Main, Kicheche, Kangulumira, Adjumani, Oyam, Tororo and Kyakasengura, among others.

In the first pension scam case in November 2016, out of the three pension thieves, the Anti-Corruption Court handed the late Christopher Obey,  who served as principal accountant in the Pensions department, the toughest sentence.

This was followed by his former boss, Lwamafa, who was sentenced to seven years and Stephen Kiwanuka Kunsa, the former commissioner in-charge of pensions, who got the least punishment of five years.

While handing Obey the jail term of 10 years, presiding judge Lawrence Gidudu faulted him for having been the main culprit in the syndicate corruption, who generated the schedules which audit reports found contained ghosts.

“A3 (Obey) has taken the biggest sentence on the basis of being the generator of the schedules which the audit reports found to be containing ghosts. He was the manipulator and centre man in this scam,”  Justice Gidudu ruled.

The judge in further faulting Obey, said he was a technical officer who was responsible for advising his colleagues (Lwamafa and Kunsa) on the budget formation, execution, adding that he further generated the schedules through which the funds were drained where he was the co-signatory.

The State had accused the three convicts of having fraudulently budgeted Shs88.2b as contribution to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) in the financial years 2010/11 and 2011/12, well knowing that civil servants don’t contribute to NSSF.

The judge, while convicting the trio,  said the syndicate corruption started from the Public Service Ministry, was smoothened in the Finance ministry and perfected in Cairo Bank, where the said money was paid to ghost pensioners.

Further, the judge in his verdict, ordered the three convicted officials to jointly compensate government with Shs50b following the financial loss that they had occasioned to it and that the compensation would have been much higher but since the convicts were assisted by other criminals, who are still at large in committing the crime, the Shs50b would be sufficient in the circumstances. It was not clear by press time yesterday whether the State had recovered the said money from the convicts.

In 2018 in the second pension case, Obey,  Lwamafa,  Kunsa alongside city lawyer Bob Kasango, were convicted in connection with the forgery of a judicial document to siphon more than Shs15.4b pension cash.

Kasango was sentenced to 16 years by Justice Margaret Tibulya but he died while in prison of heart-related complications before he could complete his jail term. 

In this case, Lwamafa was sentenced to nine years, the late Obey to 14 years and Kunsa to nine years.

The Shs15.4b was diverted to the account of Kasango’s Hall and Partners law firm by the three officials.

List of those released from different prison