YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE! Museveni Rejects Mariam Wangadya Resignation as UHRC Boss During Special Phone Call

The resignation letter had been written. It had been sent to the appointing authority. For a moment, the leadership of Uganda’s national human rights watchdog appeared headed for a change.

Then came the phone call.

Mariam Wangadya says President Yoweri Museveni personally called her and rejected her decision to step down as chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC), directing her to return to office immediately if she had already left.

The revelation, made before Parliament on Tuesday, August 11, has transformed what had appeared to be a straightforward resignation saga into a more complicated question about the leadership, authority and paralysis inside one of Uganda’s key constitutional institutions.

Wangadya was appearing before the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE), not because she had volunteered to explain her departure, but after Parliament had escalated its efforts to bring her before the committee.

On Monday, COSASE chairperson Muwada Nkunyingi directed police to arrest and produce Wangadya after she repeatedly failed to honour committee summonses.

A day later, Wangadya walked into the committee room and gave MPs an account of her disputed departure that placed the President at the centre of the matter.

“Mr Chairman, it is true I wrote a letter of resignation to His Excellency the President, and my resignation was rejected,” Ms Wangadya told the committee.

The statement confirmed something that had been circulating for weeks: Wangadya had attempted to leave the commission.

But according to her, the attempt did not survive a direct intervention from the appointing authority.

The phone call that changed everything

The most striking part of Wangadya’s testimony was not that she had resigned.

It was how she said the resignation was rejected.

There was no letter from State House, no written decision presented to the committee and, according to Wangadya, no formal document communicating the rejection.

Instead, there was a telephone call.

“The response I received from the appointing authority was through a phone call. It was not in writing. Sometimes His Excellency the President communicates through phone calls, and I was instructed, if I had left office, to return to office immediately. And I complied with the directive of the Fountain of Honor,” she added.

The account leaves Wangadya’s continued tenure resting on a presidential conversation that, by her own admission, was not documented in writing.

For Wangadya, however, there was no ambiguity about what the call meant.

She returned to office.

The Attorney General, Sam Mayanja, later reinforced that position in Parliament, according to Wangadya, by making it clear that she remained the substantive chairperson of the commission.

“He did not speak just on his own behalf. The words he spoke were the words of His Excellency the President… And I respect the Fountain of Honor, so I am in office,” she maintained.

The exchange has placed a remarkable political backdrop around an institution whose constitutional mandate is to investigate human rights violations, monitor government compliance with human rights standards and provide redress to victims.

Inside a commission that stopped meeting

Yet Wangadya’s attempted resignation is only one chapter in a much larger story.

Behind the parliamentary summonses and the dispute over her position lies a commission struggling with internal dysfunction.

Wangadya, who was appointed chairperson on July 15, 2021 and sworn in on September 29 of that year, is under scrutiny as COSASE examines accountability issues arising from the Auditor General’s report for the financial year ended December 31, 2025.

But the questions before Parliament go beyond financial records.

The committee proceedings exposed an organisation whose leadership has reportedly been unable to hold a formal decision-making meeting since December 2025.

For a body entrusted with a constitutional responsibility to protect human rights, the absence of regular leadership meetings is more than an administrative inconvenience.

It has reportedly contributed to the paralysis of the commission’s tribunal system and affected the execution of its mandate.

The institution appears to have reached a point where the dispute at the top is no longer confined to private disagreements.

It is playing out in public.

A handshake that never happened

The atmosphere inside the COSASE hearing offered perhaps the clearest picture of the relations within the commission.

At one point, UHRC Commissioner Stephen Basaliza sought permission from the committee leadership to greet Wangadya.

The gesture did not end with the customary handshake.

Instead, Wangadya responded with a cold wave.

The brief encounter was revealing precisely because it required no explanation.

The body charged with investigating violations of citizens’ rights was itself displaying signs of a deeply fractured leadership.

The disagreement between Wangadya and fellow commissioners has now become impossible to separate from the commission’s wider institutional problems.

Parliament’s uncomfortable questions

COSASE’s interest in Wangadya comes at a particularly sensitive moment.

The committee is examining accountability queries from the Auditor General while also confronting questions about the commission’s ability to make decisions and conduct its business.

Wangadya’s testimony has introduced another layer: the role of the appointing authority in determining whether she could leave office.

She says she resigned.

She says Museveni rejected the resignation.

She says the rejection came by telephone.

And she says she returned because the President instructed her to do so.

The absence of a written rejection may now become an important part of the wider parliamentary examination of the commission’s leadership and administration.

But Wangadya was emphatic about one thing: she does not regard herself as a former chairperson.

Despite the pressure from Parliament, the internal divisions and the controversy surrounding her attempted resignation, she maintains that she remains the substantive head of the UHRC.

The story that began with a resignation letter has therefore ended, at least for now, with Wangadya still in the chair.

She tried to leave.

According to her account, Museveni told her to return.

And she did.

Meanwhile, Wangadya has apologized to Museveni, admitting that the commission let him and Ugandans down, as reported Here.

It should be remembered that things had become so bad that some commissioners were reportedly going to meetings with guns, as reported Here.