Title: The role of whistleblower protection in strengthening legislative oversight in Uganda
Authors: Dr. Mategeko Betty
Ahumuza Audrey
Dr. Twinomujuni Rosebell
Volume: 10
Issue: 7
Pages: 233-241
Publication Date: 2026/07/28
Abstract:
This study examined the role of whistleblower protection in strengthening legislative oversight in Uganda, a subject of growing importance given persistent gaps in the exposure and sanctioning of corruption, procurement malpractice, and abuse of public office within institutions that Parliament is constitutionally mandated to oversee. Guided by three specific objectives, the study assessed respondents' awareness of the legal and institutional framework for whistleblower protection under the Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2010; examined the association between perceived adequacy of protection mechanisms, trust in confidentiality safeguards, and fear of retaliation on one hand, and legislative oversight effectiveness on the other; and modelled the combined and clustered effect of these predictors while accounting for variation across parliamentary committees. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, and a structured questionnaire was administered to 240 purposively and stratified-randomly selected respondents drawn from Members of Parliament, parliamentary committee clerks, civil society and media actors, and officials of independent oversight bodies. Data were analysed using univariate statistics (frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations), bivariate techniques (Pearson correlation, independent-samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, and chi-square tests of association), and a linear mixed-effects model with committee membership specified as a random intercept to account for clustering. Results showed that 63.3 percent of respondents were aware of the whistleblower protection framework, and that perceived adequacy of protection (r = 0.728, p < 0.001) and trust in confidentiality mechanisms (r = 0.669, p < 0.001) were strongly and positively correlated with oversight effectiveness, while fear of retaliation was negatively correlated (r = -0.524, p < 0.001). The mixed-effects model confirmed that awareness, perceived adequacy, and trust significantly and positively predicted oversight effectiveness, whereas fear of retaliation significantly and negatively predicted it, even after accounting for an intraclass correlation of 0.27 attributable to committee-level clustering. The study concluded that whistleblower protection is a substantive, empirically demonstrable determinant of legislative oversight effectiveness in Uganda, and recommended the strengthening of confidentiality safeguards, the operationalisation of witness and whistleblower protection funds, and sustained civic and institutional awareness campaigns on the existing legal framework.