The Anti-Corruption Court recently issued fresh criminal summons against embattled former Permanent Secretary Geraldine Ssali, directing her to appear and answer charges in the long-running UGX3.8 billion war compensation fraud case.
The summons, captured in the latest court communication and referenced in ongoing proceedings, underscores that the legal storm surrounding Ssali is far from over.
The new directive comes at a time when her co-accused, including Busiki County MP Paul Akamba, have already appeared to face charges, while Ssali herself has missed earlier sessions on account of procedural delays.
The court’s insistence that she now appears in person reflects a renewed push to move the high-profile corruption trial forward — one that has gripped the public since 2024 and shows no signs of fading.
For Ssali, the summons represents more than a judicial requirement; it signals a stunning reversal of fortune.
Only a few years ago, she was one of Uganda’s most celebrated technocrats, a woman whose rise from Makerere University to the UK’s HM Treasury and later to the commanding heights of Uganda’s public service was held up as proof that a new generation of globally trained, results-driven civil servants had arrived.
Now she stands accused of participating in a conspiracy to divert public funds, facing charges that, if proven, carry the possibility of long-term imprisonment.
The contrast between her brilliant ascent and her deepening legal troubles raises a question many Ugandans are asking: What exactly went wrong for Geraldine Ssali?
From Gayaza and Manchester to NSSF: A star technocrat emerges
Born in the mid-1970s, Ssali’s story initially reads like a public-sector success case.
She attended Gayaza High School, graduated from Makerere University with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, Statistics, and Economics, and then headed to the United Kingdom for an MBA in Finance at the University of Manchester.
She qualified as a management accountant and later became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).
Her biggest leap came in London, where she served as Head of the Directorate Management Unit at Her Majesty’s Treasury.
The role involved high-level budgeting, resource allocation, financial forecasting and staff leadership inside one of the world’s most sophisticated public finance systems. For a Ugandan technocrat, it was rarefied air.
When she returned home and was appointed Deputy Managing Director of the National Social Security Fund in 2011, many wondered how she had landed such a powerful seat so quickly.
She was not publicly political, not part of Kampala’s most visible technocratic networks, and to the wider public appeared to have come from nowhere. Her CV, however, explained the logic behind the decision.
Within three years, she had risen to Acting Managing Director, becoming one of the most influential women in Uganda’s public sector.
First Fall: Board wars, hot temper, and a closed door at NSSF
Even in her NSSF heyday, storm clouds were gathering behind the Fund’s positive performance.
Relationships between Ssali, the board and Managing Director Richard Byarugaba deteriorated steadily.
She was seen by colleagues as brilliant but combative — an aggressive operator who challenged authority and resisted being supervised.
Professional disagreements escalated into formal accusations of insubordination, board-led disciplinary proceedings, counter-claims of witch-hunt, repeated court battles, and a managerial environment that many insiders described as unsustainable.
By October 2017, after six and a half turbulent years, the board recommended that her contract not be renewed. The Minister of Finance agreed, and her term ended quietly, while the Fund moved on without her.
It was Ssali’s first major fall, and it reinforced a recurring lesson in Uganda’s bureaucratic hierarchies: technical brilliance alone is rarely enough.
Temperament matters, coalitions matter, and relationships matter.
Reinvention: Consultant, board director, and then permanent secretary
After leaving NSSF, Ssali refused to disappear. She founded Regent Capital, a financial consultancy dealing in banking, pensions, corporate finance advisory, and risk management.
She also served as a Non-Executive Director at Housing Finance Bank for more than eight years, keeping a solid foothold in high-level financial governance.
Then, in July 2021, came her most dramatic comeback yet. President Museveni appointed her Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, one of the country’s most sensitive and economically strategic ministries.
In that role, she became the accounting officer, administrative head, and policy gatekeeper of a sector responsible for trade, industrialisation, and Uganda’s cooperative revival agenda.
The appointment signalled that her star was rising again and that State House still trusted her.
Trouble at trade: Renovation money and a toxic office
Letters to My Younger Self: Winnie Nakimuli—"You Are Worthy Simply Because You Exist"But the ministry soon turned into another battleground. Within two years, parliamentary committees were questioning her management of a UGX5 billion supplementary budget that had been approved for renting new premises for the ministry.
MPs accused her of diverting the entire allocation to renovate Farmers House instead of renting as Parliament had authorised, and of doing so in ways that allegedly violated provisions of the Public Finance Management Act.
They also raised concerns about inflated contract values and questionable procurements related to furniture, advance payments, and logistics.
Ssali defended her actions robustly, insisting she was saving taxpayers billions by improving a government-owned property instead of committing the ministry to expensive rent.
Parliament rejected that justification. A committee report recommended her removal as accounting officer.
Although the Secretary to the Treasury withdrew her designation, President Museveni intervened directly and ordered her reinstatement.
The moment underlined a paradox that would define her second rise: she was controversial, but protected; combative, yet repeatedly rewarded.
Personality vs system: The “Hot-headed” technocrat
By this point, Ssali’s reputation had hardened around one central tension. On paper, she was among the most qualified civil servants in Uganda. In practice, she had become one of the most divisive.
Her critics described a leader prone to confrontation, unwilling to take correction, and responsible for a tense work environment that churned staff and alienated colleagues.
Her supporters argued that she was being punished for being an unusually strong, independent woman in institutions resistant to reform and female authority.
Whatever interpretation one adopts, a pattern remained clear. Ssali seemed to thrive in conflict, and conflict eventually began to consume her.
Money enters the picture: The Buyaka compensation saga
The turning point between administrative controversy and criminal jeopardy arose from the war-loss compensation programme.
Prosecutors allege that between 2019 and 2023, Ssali joined a conspiracy with MPs Paul Akamba, Michael Mawanda, and Wamakuyu Mudimi, alongside a ministry official and a city lawyer, to fraudulently divert UGX 3.4 billion that was meant to compensate Buyaka Growers Cooperative Society in Bulambuli District.
The money, investigators say, was redirected into private accounts and used for purposes unrelated to the cooperative’s verified claim.
In July 2024, Ssali was arrested and charged with abuse of office, causing financial loss, conspiracy to defraud, and money laundering.
She was remanded to Luzira Prison and later released on bail. Her lawyers insist she is innocent, that the matter is politically engineered, and that she acted within her authority as Permanent Secretary.
The State maintains the opposite, and the case has been committed for trial. The recent criminal summons reflects the court’s renewed determination to proceed.
What went wrong?
Ssali’s fall appears to be the product of three forces converging over time. First, her career was built on brains and credentials more than on deep institutional alliances. She was often brilliant, but frequently isolated, especially when disputes turned political.
Second, the leadership style that propelled her upward, boldness, refusal to bend, impatience with what she saw as mediocrity, also became the style that repeatedly triggered wars with boards, ministers, MPs, and colleagues.
Finally, while earlier controversies could be framed as procedural risk or poor judgment, the Buyaka compensation case represents a far more dangerous shift.
If prosecutors prove deliberate fraud, her story moves beyond temperament and into criminality.
If she is acquitted, she will argue that she was a casualty of the same institutional politics she has battled all her life.
A cautionary tale for technocrats
As the Anti-Corruption Court presses her to appear and answer the allegations, Ssali stands at the most perilous point of her career.
Her journey from Gayaza to Manchester, from HM Treasury to NSSF, and from a Permanent Secretary’s office to the dock at Nakasero is more than a personal drama.
It is a cautionary tale about the fragile relationship between competence, character, ambition, and power in Uganda’s public life.
For years, nobody thought of her as a thief. She was seen as bright, bold, brilliant, even if hot-headed.
Now, the courts will determine whether that narrative survives, or whether her name will ultimately be remembered not for the heights she reached, but for the way she fell.
