Court has dismissed a criminal case filed against three officials of the Federation of Uganda Football Association—FUFA on grounds that the case was erroneously brought before court and the charges brought forward were inconsistent in law because FUFA is not a public body.
Buganda Road Chief Magistrate Sylvia Nabaggala also cancelled criminal summons issued against the FUFA officials and said the trio has no case to answer.
Dennis Mbidde, a member of Save Our Soccer-SOS last month sued FUFA president Lawrence Mulindwa, chief executive officer, Edgar Watson and legal committee chairperson, Muhammadi Bazirengedde accusing them of forging the FUFA constitution, making false documents, fraud and breach of trust.
The Magistrate ruled that the lawyers representing SOS—Mulema Mukasa, David Ssempala and Robert Kagoro—had not obtained the mandatory permission from court before commencing with the private commercial prosecutions. She said the complainant was an alien to FUFA since he was neither a member of FUFA nor a delegate in the Assembly.
FUFA was represented by Evans Ochieng, Alex Luganda and Ronald Bogezi. A jovial Federation publicist Rogers Mulindwa said they had floored SOS for the forth time.
But one of the SOS lawyers, Mulema Mukasa, who walked out of court together with his client before the Chief Magistrate made her ruling, said since the High Court had called the file for review, there was no way Nabaggala would make a ruling.
Mukasa argued that the Magistrate has brought herself more problems because when a file is called by the High Court one cannot make a ruling.
Mulema added that they had applied to the High Court for intervention after noticing strange things happening in the way the case was being handled.
