Nearly a decade after street vendor Olive Basemera plunged into the Nakivubo drainage channel and drowned while fleeing a Kampala Capital City Authority enforcement operation, the High court has answered a difficult question about responsibility for her death.
KCCA officers were not proved to have chased Basemera into the channel. But the authority, Justice Boniface Wamala ruled, still had a responsibility to protect people from the danger posed by an open drain.
It was one of several consequential court decisions last week, alongside the dismissal of an Italian construction company’s Shs 11.3 billion claim arising from the Kampala Northern Bypass, the remand of a former Mukono district speaker on corruption charges and an order requiring Stanbic Bank to reverse a $41,541 payment made to the wrong account.
Basemera died on August 4, 2017. In a case brought by Nalujja Rose, Kugonza Patrick and Baleke Richard, the plaintiffs argued that KCCA enforcement officers pursued the street vendor during an operation, causing her to fall into the open Nakivubo drainage channel.
KCCA disputed that account, maintaining that Basemera entered the channel while trying to escape enforcement officers. Justice Wamala found that the plaintiffs hadn’t proved that KCCA officers chased her.
Their witnesses had not directly witnessed the alleged pursuit, while a police report established only that the incident occurred and was investigated. But that didn’t absolve the city authority.
The judge found that KCCA’s statutory responsibility to maintain major drains extended to taking reasonable precautions to prevent people from falling into them. Its failure to adequately protect the public from the open drainage channel therefore made it partly liable for Basemera’s death.
Responsibility was shared. The court found Basemera 30 per cent responsible, saying she had knowingly engaged in unlicensed vending and fled into a stormwater channel despite the danger.
Justice Wamala awarded Shs 121.7 million to five dependants for loss of dependency and another Shs 2.2 million in special damages. The total compensation is subject to a 30 per cent reduction for Basemera’s contributory negligence.
The awards will attract annual interest of 10 per cent from the date of judgment, while KCCA was ordered to pay 70 per cent of the plaintiffs’ taxed costs.
SHS 11.3BN NORTHERN BYPASS CLAIM FAILS
In another long-running dispute, the High Court dismissed a multibillion-shilling claim brought by Italian construction company Salini Constructori SpA against the government over the Kampala Northern Bypass.
Justice Stephen Mubiru’s judgment arose from a 2003 contract to build the road. Salini began work in May 2004 and completed the project in September 2009. Payment disagreements subsequently went through joint measurement and arbitration, resulting in an arbitral award in March 2013 and a Deed of Settlement and Release in June 2015.
The company later returned to court seeking Shs 11.3 billion and €2.27 million, arguing that the government and Uganda National Roads Authority had failed to complete the final statement of accountrequired under the contract.
The defendants maintained that the outstanding issues had already been resolved. Justice Mubiru rejected preliminary objections challenging the court’s jurisdiction, Salini’s authority to sue and the timing of the claim.
He also found that the settlement deed did not prevent Salini from pursuing issues arising from the final account process. But that wasn’t enough to rescue the claim. The judge found that the specific amounts being demanded had already been paid, determined through arbitration or covered by the settlement.
He further found that the defendants had acted in good faith by rejecting Salini’s draft final account and asking the company to submit a nil-balance version, which it failed to do.
He said awarding nominal damages would serve little purpose because the circumstances partly resulted from Salini’s failure to complete the process. The court dismissed the suit and ordered costs against the Attorney General. No costs were awarded to UNRA because it had ceased to exist as a corporate body during the proceedings.
FORMER MUKONO SPEAKER REMANDED
Meanwhile, former Mukono District Speaker Betty Hope Nakasi was remanded to prison until October 21 after appearing before the Anti-Corruption Court on corruption charges. The State House Anti-Corruption Unit arraigned Nakasi, working with the Criminal Investigations Directorate and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Prosecutors allege that on June 30, 2025, at Mukono District Local Government headquarters, Nakasi and other people who have not been arrested sought Shs2 million from the then procurement officer of Buikwe District.
The money was allegedly demanded in exchange for using Nakasi’s influence with the Mukono District Service Commission to help the officer secure promotion to senior procurement officer in Mukono.
The case emerged from investigations into allegations that government jobs were being illegally sold within Mukono Local Government following complaints of extortion involving some District Service Commission members and politicians. Nakasi was remanded as investigations continued.
$41,541 SENT TO WRONG ACCOUNT
Another case began not with allegations of corruption or a multimillion-dollar construction contract, but with an accountant entering the wrong bank account number. The error eventually put $41,541 at the centre of a High Court dispute.
Justice Joyce Kavuma on September 30 ordered Stanbic Bank Uganda to reverse the payment after Seed Co International (Proprietary) Limited persuaded the court that the money had mistakenly been transferred to 2B Business Link General Trading SMC Limited. Seed Co said its accountant entered the wrong account number on August 7, 2023, while paying its service provider, Bumper Harvest Seed Farm PLC.
Details belonging to 2B Business Link had remained stored in Seed Co’s payment system following an earlier transaction. 2B Business Link insisted the payment was intentional and concerned money allegedly owed by Ethiopian businessman Robel Haile.
It pointed to a previous $13,820 payment Seed Co had made on Haile’s behalf in 2021. Justice Kavuma was unconvinced. She found that 2B Business Link produced no evidence proving the alleged debt and did not call Haile to testify.
She also struck out a supplementary affidavit filed without permission after Seed Co had served its submissions, describing the manoeuvre as “trial by ambush.”
The matching account number, bank and SWIFT code, the judge found, could be explained by the autofill of previously stored payment details. On a balance of probabilities, Seed Co had demonstrated that the transfer resulted from an honest accounting error.
Stanbic Bank Uganda was ordered to return the $41,541 to Stanbic Bank of Botswana Limited within 14 days of being served with the order. 2B Business Link was ordered to pay the costs of the case.