The High Court in Luwero has upheld the election of National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Brenda Nabukenya as the Luwero District Woman Member of Parliament, dismissing a petition filed by her National Resistance Movement (NRM) rival, Agnes Kirabo, for failure to prove that the declared election results were erroneous.
In a judgment delivered on Friday through the Electronic Court Case Management Information System, Justice Vincent Emmy Mugabo ruled that Kirabo had failed to establish, on the balance of probabilities, that she secured more votes than Nabukenya in the January 15, 2026 parliamentary election.
The ruling affirms the Electoral Commission’s declaration of Nabukenya as the duly elected district Woman MP, bringing to a close the election dispute before the High Court. According to official Electoral Commission results, Nabukenya won the election with 67,399 votes against Kirabo’s 55,697, giving the NUP candidate a majority of 11,702 votes.
Kirabo, however, challenged the outcome, describing the declared results as erroneous, illegal and contrary to the Parliamentary Elections Act. She petitioned the court seeking to nullify Nabukenya’s election and have herself declared the rightful winner.
The NRM candidate claimed she had defeated Nabukenya by 1,019 votes, relying on Declaration of Results (DR) forms which she said she had obtained from the Electoral Commission. The disputed documents became central to the petition, with Nabukenya challenging their authenticity and describing them as forged.
The Electoral Commission, which was also sued alongside Nabukenya, defended the election outcome, maintaining that results from the respective polling stations had been duly received, tallied and declared in accordance with the law.
The Commission relied on an affidavit by the Returning Officer and the Return Form for Transmission of Results, arguing that Kirabo had failed to demonstrate that the declared results were incorrect.
In resolving the dispute, Justice Mugabo found that the evidence presented by Kirabo was insufficient to establish that the DR forms accurately reflected results showing that she had obtained more votes than Nabukenya.
“Having preferred the records relied upon by the first respondent, I find that the petitioner has not established that the DR Forms accurately recording the election results gave her a higher total than the first respondent. It has therefore not been proved on the balance of probabilities that the petitioner, rather than the first respondent, won the election,” the judge ruled.
The court subsequently dismissed the petition on its merits, declining to nullify Nabukenya’s election or declare Kirabo the winner.
Justice Mugabo also awarded costs to Nabukenya and the Electoral Commission, citing the established legal principle that costs ordinarily follow the outcome of litigation.
“The petition has failed on its merits, and I find no sufficient reason to depart from the ordinary principle that costs follow the event unless the Court, for good reason, orders otherwise. I accordingly award costs to both respondents,” the judge stated.
The court formally declared Nabukenya duly elected as the Luwero District Woman Member of Parliament in the January 15, 2026 election.
The decision reinforces the Electoral Commission’s declaration of Nabukenya as the winner and underscores the evidentiary burden placed on election petitioners seeking to overturn declared parliamentary results.
In an election petition, a challenger must present sufficient evidence to establish the grounds upon which the election is being contested. In Kirabo’s case, the court found that the evidence did not establish that she had obtained more votes than the declared winner.
Nabukenya welcomed the judgment, describing it as a reflection of the will of the people of Luwero.
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