MASAKA, Uganda — The long-running legal battle over the Masaka City Woman MP seat moved into a new phase on Monday, as the High Court held preliminary proceedings in a petition filed by National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Rose Nalubowa against State Minister for Local Government Justine Nameere.
At the hearing before Justice Bernard Namanya, Nalubowa’s lawyer, Alexander Lule, told the court that all respondents had been served with the evidence the petitioner intends to rely on.
Nameere’s lawyer, Anthony Bazira, asked the court to allow the respondents time to file a rejoinder.
Monday’s sitting was largely procedural, dealing with the exchange of evidence and the respondents’ request to respond, with the substantive hearing expected to follow further directions from the court.
The dispute traces back to the 15 January general election, in which the Electoral Commission initially declared Nalubowa the winner with 25,443 votes against Nameere’s 20,324 — a margin of more than 5,000 votes.
Nameere challenged the outcome before the Masaka Chief Magistrate’s Court, alleging serious irregularities at 11 polling stations. Chief Magistrate Albert Asiimwe ordered a recount, which ran under tight security from late January into early February and uncovered a number of anomalies, including ballot boxes without ballot papers, unsealed boxes, and boxes found to contain votes for only one candidate.
When the recount concluded in the early hours of 2 February, Asiimwe declared Nameere the winner with 25,502 votes, against 23,176 for Nalubowa — overturning the Electoral Commission’s original declaration.
At the time, Nameere described the outcome as setting a legal precedent, while sections of the legal community questioned the magistrate’s departure from past practice, where recounts have typically been halted once a broken ballot-box seal is detected.
Nalubowa has consistently rejected the recount, arguing it was irregular and did not reflect the will of Masaka City’s voters. Her legal team has previously pointed to inconsistencies in the recount’s vote totals compared with the Electoral Commission’s original tally, and has argued that the process fell short of a genuinely democratic outcome.
The case has already passed through several rounds of legal contest before reaching Monday’s hearing.
In February, Nalubowa’s lawyers sought a separate judicial review of the entire recount process and asked that the acting judge assigned to that application recuse himself.
Nameere was later served with the substantive election petition through newspaper publication after she reportedly declined to accept court notice directly.
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Through her lawyers, Nameere has asked the court to dismiss Nalubowa’s petition with costs, arguing that it is defective, incompetent and discloses no cause of action. Her legal team has separately described the allegations in the petition as unfounded and based on hearsay, noting that Nalubowa and her agents did not participate in the recount process itself.
The Masaka City Returning Officer and the Electoral Commission are also named as respondents in the case.
The Masaka case is among 346 election petitions arising from Uganda’s January 2026 parliamentary and local council elections that are currently being handled across the country’s High Court circuits and Chief Magistrates’ Courts, as part of a coordinated judicial effort to resolve election disputes within the legally mandated timelines.
With Monday’s hearing limited to procedural matters, the substantive contest over who rightfully represents Masaka City’s women in Parliament remains unresolved, pending further directions from Justice Namanya’s court.
