KAMPALA. After 46 years of kidnap, the judiciary and Members of the legal fraternity have escalated the good work that was done and accorded to the country by the first Ugandan Chief Justice Benedicto Kagimu Kiwanuka.
Speaking during the memorial lecture in remembrance of the first chief justice, the Deputy chief justice Alfonse Owiny -Dollo has described the late Benedicto Kiwanuka as a principled, selfless, fearless and uncompromised defender of the rule of law and justice.
Justice Dollo said that commemoration is a manifestation of the rule of law and justice over all forms of power and disregard of the rule of law.
The deputy chief justice has also assured the family of the late Kiwanuka that the Judiciary holds his high esteem and will hold dear the values that he died for.
“We stand with you to proudly honour the life and services of your father, his name and memory are prefectural engraved in the onus of the judiciary and in the hearts of Ugandans at large,” Justice Dollo said.
The judiciary held the inaugural lecture to commemorate the life of the late Benedicto Kiwanuka with his immediate predecessor Samuel Wako Wambuzi as the keynote speaker.
The late Benedicto Kiwanuka was on September 21, 1972, was forcefully kidnapped from the chief justice chambers at Kampala High Court building by state agents of the Idi Amin Regime and was has never been seen again.
At the same function, the Family of the Late Chief Justice Kiwanuka has also gifted a soft-ware package to the Judiciary to enable judges and magistrates to write and deliver e-judgments.
According to the family representative and son to the late; Amb. Peter Kagimu Kiwanuka, the said software will phase out the tiresome paper method of writing submissions , pleadings, judgments and filing heaps of papers in courts.
The family’s gift is a reciprocation of the Judiciary’s honour to their late father for holding a lecture in his memory and erecting a monument at the steps of Highcourt headquarters in Kampala .
Kagimu said the plan to kidnap and murder his father started when he released a Briton from Luzira prison who had been arrested by Idi Amin and had to be used as a ransom to humiliate the British government.
“This angered Amin who referred to the late Kiwanuka as a big man in government from Masaka who was critising his government and was being showered with many praises other than him (Amin) who had overthrown the Milton Obote government’,” Kagimu narrated .
