Inside the IGG’s First 100 Days: Naluzze Aisha Batala sets a tough line on corruption

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When Justice Naluzze Aisha Batala stepped into office as Uganda’s Inspector General of Government late last year, she knew the expectations were high.

Appointed by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in October 2025 and sworn in the following month, Batala inherited an institution with sweeping constitutional powers but persistent questions about its ability to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated corruption.

One hundred days later, she says the focus is clear: tighten investigations, speed up cases, and make sure corruption carries real consequences.

“I assumed office fully aware of the responsibility entrusted to me under the constitutional mandate of the Inspectorate of Government,” she said on Thursday at the Uganda Media Centre, outlining her early priorities and the first signs of progress.

At the heart of her approach is a push to make the Inspectorate more responsive to the public. Batala says she has prioritised reforms to improve how complaints are registered and handled, including strengthening the Inspectorate’s contact centre and streamlining internal case management.

The aim is simple: ensure citizens who report corruption actually receive feedback.

She has also ordered changes meant to reduce investigation delays and shorten the time it takes cases to move through the system. Digitisation and automation, long discussed but slowly implemented, are now central to that plan.

“We are placing strong emphasis on automation, digitisation, and digital transformation to modernize the operations of the Inspectorate,” she said.

But Batala has also made clear that reform inside the institution must translate into tougher enforcement outside it.

One of her most striking targets is raising the prosecution rate for corruption cases to at least 70 percent by the end of the 2025/2026 financial year.

“This should be a warning to public officials out there,” she said bluntly. “If we get you, our first action is to ensure that you are prosecuted.”

Alongside prosecution, Batala has pushed investigators to focus on high-impact cases and expand their attention to financial crimes such as money laundering, areas where corrupt networks increasingly operate.

The Inspectorate’s constitutional powers, which include freezing bank accounts, halting activities, and issuing orders similar in weight to arrest warrants, give the office unusual authority among oversight bodies. Yet translating those powers into consistent outcomes has often been the challenge.

Early figures suggest the institution is beginning to shift toward more proactive enforcement.

Between July and December 2025, the Inspectorate registered 1,516 complaints and sanctioned 1,151 cases, about 75 percent of those received. Investigators concluded 308 corruption cases and 330 Ombudsman matters, including 14 high-profile corruption investigations.

Financial recoveries also formed part of the results.

The Inspectorate says it recovered more than sh 2.02 billion in misappropriated funds during the period. Another sh 844 million was paid to public officials whose salaries, gratuities, or pensions had been withheld or delayed.

Some of the work has also focused on systemic problems rather than individual misconduct.

Eight systemic investigations and seven institutional reviews were carried out to identify structural weaknesses in public agencies. Meanwhile, 246 investigations into breaches of the Leadership Code were completed, along with 927 verification exercises.

Batala has also emphasised intelligence-led investigations, an approach intended to move beyond reacting to complaints. Twenty-seven cases were generated through intelligence operations during the period.