Court Upholds Election Results for Jinja MP Lusala and Mayor Nagaya

The High Court in Jinja has delivered major rulings regarding the January 2026 general elections, upholding the electoral victories of National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Batuwa Timothy Lusala as the Jinja South Division West MP and National Resistance Movement (NRM) candidate Nagaya Abdulhafidh as the Jinja City mayor.

In separate judgments, Justice Vincent Wagona acknowledged that certain irregularities had occurred during the electoral process. However, the judge ruled that the petitioners failed to prove the mistakes substantially affected the final outcomes.

The parliamentary election petition was filed by NRM candidate Moses Grace Balyeku, who accused the Electoral Commission of tallying errors and leaving out several polling stations. Balyeku claimed he was the rightful winner, pointing to provisional figures and alleging ballot box tampering.

Justice Wagona clarified that provisional numbers announced earlier in the evening were not final. While court discovered that a few polling stations were excluded due to missing declaration forms and police interventions, incorporating those available votes only widened Lusala’s winning margin. Balyeku’s petition was dismissed with an order to pay costs.

Simultaneously, the court addressed a petition filed by Kirunda Mubarak Edirisa challenging Nagaya’s mayoral victory. Kirunda argued that votes had been inflated and that results from nine polling stations were left out of the transmission process.

The court established that data-entry errors by tally clerks had indeed overstated Nagaya’s tally at specific stations. Even after deducting the inflated figures and adjusting for missing returns, the remaining margin remained secure enough to confirm Nagaya as the rightful winner. Consequently, both petitions were dismissed, bringing legal clarity to Jinja’s leadership.

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