Uganda’s controversial digital number plate project has suffered a legal blow after Attorney General Sam Mayanja told Parliament that the government’s 2021 contract with Russian firm Joint Stock Company Global Security (JSCGS) is legally null and unenforceable, citing fundamental breaches of Ugandan law and failures that go to the root of the agreement.
Mayanja made the damning assessment on Tuesday while appearing before Parliament’s Committee on Physical Infrastructure, which is investigating the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System (ITMS), amid mounting questions over the cost of the project, procurement process, delayed number plates, revenue sharing, feasibility studies and the performance of the Russian contractor.
The Attorney General told the committee that after examining the agreement, he could not find a legally binding contract capable of obliging the Ugandan government because fundamental conditions underpinning the arrangement had not been fulfilled.
“From the onset, this contract contradicts many provisions of our existing law,” Mayanja told the committee, describing the agreement as one that requires a major overhaul.
His intervention places the controversial project in an extraordinary position: motorists have for years been required to obtain digital number plates under an arrangement that the government’s principal legal adviser now says does not legally bind the State.
The revelations also raise questions about how the agreement was approved in the first place, why the government proceeded with implementation despite the legal and technical concerns that had emerged, and who should ultimately bear responsibility for the money and administrative decisions already committed to the project.
The controversy also brings back into focus the role of Security Minister Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi, who was one of the senior government officials publicly associated with the project and who signed the 2021 agreement with JSCGS.
When the contract was signed, Muhwezi strongly defended the arrangement, insisting that its primary purpose was security and that there was no reason for motorists to fear that the system would interfere with their privacy.
“The purpose of this Intelligent Transport Monitoring System is only one; it is security,” Muhwezi said at the time.
He added that the system was intended to help security agencies identify vehicles involved in crime.
He further assured motorists that the information collected would be used only for security purposes and that the project was not intended to intrude into the private affairs of vehicle owners.
Muhwezi also defended the legality of the procurement, saying the agreement had been cleared by the Solicitor General and procured within the law.
“It was done within the law, and there has been clearance from the Solicitor General,” he said, while dismissing concerns that the procurement process had breached Uganda’s laws.
He explained that the new system would involve vehicles being re-registered and fitted with digital number plates and tracking technology linked to a monitoring centre. When asked who would bear the cost of the new system, Muhwezi said motorists would be required to pay for registration.
“The payment is going to be communicated. As you know always, registration is not free of charge. Anybody who owns a vehicle will meet that charge,” he said.
Muhwezi later continued to defend the project when Parliament questioned the Shs714,300 charge for new digital number plates, arguing that the private investor had put its money into the project and therefore needed to recover its investment.
“Government is not putting a shilling in this project but the investor is putting all his money in it and he has to recover it,” Muhwezi told Parliament’s Physical Infrastructure Committee in August 2023.
At the time, he said the project would be rolled out in phases, beginning with Kampala before being extended to other parts of the country.
However, as Parliament has now dug deeper into the project and the Attorney General has declared the contract legally defective, Muhwezi is seeking to place greater distance between himself and the controversial digital number plate arrangement.
In a statement posted on X on October 6, Muhwezi said the digitisation of number plates was a component of ITMS, which he said had been launched in 2019 under the Ministry of Works and Transport.
“The digitisation of number plates is a component of the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System (ITMS) that was launched in 2019 under the Ministry of Works and Transport,” Muhwezi said.
He welcomed Parliament’s interest in the project and said government programmes should be subjected to scrutiny to ensure value for money, while maintaining that national security remained the central purpose of ITMS.
“I welcome all efforts to improve the safety and security of our citizens. I thank the public, and Parliament as their representative, for their interest in ensuring value for money is protected in the conduct of Government programs,” he said.
Muhwezi further said the security objective of ITMS had been guided by President Yoweri Museveni and that government was working to improve the system.
“Our main emphasis for the ITMS project is national security, as guided by H.E. @KagutaMuseveni in his address to @Parliament_Ug. The work in progress is to improve its efficiency, adaptability, and affordability,” he said.
The statement marks a striking attempt to distance himself from a project he previously publicly championed, defended before Parliament and helped advance through the 2021 agreement. His latest position is particularly difficult to reconcile with his earlier insistence that the procurement was lawful and that the investor needed to recover its money through charges associated with the system.
The contrast is now stark: when the project was being defended, Muhwezi presented it as a security initiative and defended its procurement and cost structure; with Parliament now probing the agreement and the Attorney General questioning its legal validity, he is emphasising that the wider ITMS was under the Ministry of Works and Transport.
His current position has effectively placed greater responsibility for the project on the Ministry of Works and Transport and other agencies involved in its implementation, despite his earlier public role in defending and signing the controversial arrangement.
The project has since become the subject of a parliamentary investigation into its legality, cost, procurement, implementation and value for money. Muhwezi has also told the committee that ITMS is a multi-ministerial programme managed by several government institutions, seeking more time for officials from the different institutions to coordinate their responses to Parliament’s questions.
“As you know, we were invited to discuss the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System project, which is managed by a couple of ministries,” Muhwezi told the committee.
He explained that key officials needed to be brought together to provide comprehensive answers.
The contrast has now become one of the striking features of the parliamentary inquiry: a project once presented as a critical national security intervention is being subjected to questions over its legal foundation, financial model and implementation, while responsibility for its management is being shared among several government institutions.
One of the most damaging findings before the committee was that no feasibility study was conducted to guide the final formulation of the contract, even though the project was presented as a major national security and transport-monitoring investment involving sophisticated technology, cameras, tracking systems, digital registration plates and an elaborate financial model.
Earlier documents examined during the parliamentary scrutiny indicated that JSCGS presented a project cost of about $127 million, equivalent to roughly Shs449 billion at the time, without providing a sufficiently detailed affordability assessment or financial model explaining the project and operational costs and how the investment would be recovered.
A Ministry of Finance review of the feasibility study reportedly found that the $127 million figure was presented as a blanket cost without an adequate breakdown of project and operating costs or a clear explanation of the proposed cost recovery mechanism.
The review also questioned whether the Ministry of Security and the Office of the President had assessed the affordability of the project and its possible impact on government resources.
A subsequent parliamentary examination put the contractor’s broader investment obligation at about $257 million, roughly Shs951 billion, covering CCTV cameras, speed radars, smart registration plates, electronic tracking devices, backend operations and establishment of a number plate manufacturing facility in Uganda.
The project was expected to recover the investment over a 10-year period, with revenues projected at roughly $996 million, or about Shs3.6 trillion, from digital plates, services and traffic fines.
Yet lawmakers have now been told that the feasibility work required to establish whether the arrangement was practical, affordable and legally sound was never properly undertaken.
That finding is particularly damaging because the project did not merely involve the manufacture of number plates. It placed a private foreign company at the centre of a system designed to monitor vehicles, enforce traffic rules and generate revenue from penalties imposed on motorists.
Defence and Veteran Affairs Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka further told the committee that the National Enterprise Corporation (NEC), which was supposed to play a central role in the project, had effectively been excluded from the implementation and operation of the ITMS.
NEC is the commercial arm of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces and was expected to participate in the arrangement, including receiving five percent of revenue generated from fines and penalties.
Kiwanuka told MPs that NEC had not been effectively involved in the implementation or operation of the system and that land provided by the corporation for the project was not used for its intended purpose.
As a result, NEC could neither exercise its contractual rights nor receive its designated five percent share of revenue from fines.
The minister said the failure by JSCGS to fulfil the obligations required to operationalise the partnership and involve NEC amounted to concerns of non-performance and material breach of the cooperation agreement.
The revenue-sharing arrangement itself has previously attracted intense parliamentary criticism because JSCGS was expected to take 80 percent of traffic fines, while the government would receive 15 percent and NEC five percent.
Parliamentary investigations previously established that the project’s financial model anticipated about $510 million, roughly Shs1.8 trillion, coming from fines over the 10-year period, while another $486 million, also approximately Shs1.8 trillion, was expected from number plates and other services.
In other words, the controversial arrangement placed a huge stream of potential public revenue at the centre of a private commercial venture.
JSCGS has, however, rejected the suggestion that it has failed to meet its obligations. The company’s representative before the committee, Damir Makhmutov, argued that technology transfer and training are already taking place.
He told MPs that formal technology transfer was scheduled to begin in 2031, but said training had already started, with Ugandan employees involved in manufacturing number plate kits, installing and maintaining equipment and camera systems.
Makhmutov also said police officers were being trained on the Gelios system and that Ugandan specialists were expected to acquire the capacity to independently operate and maintain the system by the end of the contract.
The contractor’s position therefore directly conflicts with the Attorney General’s assessment and the Defence Minister’s evidence before Parliament.
The committee is now faced with determining which obligations were actually fulfilled, which ones were breached and whether the original agreement can legally continue in its present form.
The controversy has also centred on the cost imposed on motorists. New vehicle and motorcycle owners have been required to pay Shs714,300 for digital number plates, while motorists replacing existing plates have faced lower charges depending on the type of vehicle.
The high cost has repeatedly attracted criticism from motorists, vehicle dealers, manufacturers and lawmakers, particularly because traditional number plates were considerably cheaper.
Parliament has been questioning whether the security and technological features being provided justify the Shs714,300 charge.
The Uganda Manufacturers Association recently told the Physical Infrastructure Committee that the Russian company’s monopoly was contributing to delays, higher costs and disruption of businesses.
The association said the promised security benefits had not been sufficiently demonstrated, while lawmakers questioned whether the contractor had the capacity to meet demand.
The concerns have been compounded by complaints from motorists who paid for plates but waited months without receiving them. One boda boda rider told Parliament that he paid for a digital number plate in July 2025 but had still not received it, and was later asked to make another payment after complaining about the delay.
The digital number plate project has been dogged by delays almost from the beginning. The ITMS initiative dates back to 2019, when government began pursuing a vehicle tracking solution after President Yoweri Museveni directed authorities to strengthen security measures following a series of high-profile crimes involving vehicles and motorcycles. Later that year, JSCGS emerged as the company proposed to provide the tracking solution, before the government eventually entered into the 2021 agreement.
The government initially contracted JSCGS in July 2021 to implement the ITMS and supply digitally trackable number plates as part of a wider plan to improve vehicle identification and assist security agencies in tracking criminals.
The agreement, signed on July 23, 2021, provided for a 10-year arrangement under which the company would build, maintain and upgrade the system before eventually handing over an operational platform to the government.
At the time, Muhwezi presented the project principally as a national security intervention rather than simply a transport reform.
“We shall be able to tell which vehicles were in that place” when a security incident occurs, Muhwezi said while defending the system, arguing that the technology would address limitations faced by security agencies using ordinary number plates and CCTV cameras.
The government’s position has since remained that the digital tracking system is capable of helping recover stolen vehicles. Appearing before the Physical Infrastructure Committee on September 30, Muhwezi said the system was working and had helped security agencies recover stolen vehicles.
“The system is working; it covers the whole country. A Police vehicle was stolen and the system traced it to Kenya, and it was recovered because of the digital plates. So, it covers Uganda and beyond,” Muhwezi told MPs.
Uganda Police Director of ICT Felix Baryamwisaki told the same committee that the system had recorded a 90 percent recovery rate for stolen motor vehicles and vehicles involved in crime, with 337 of 375 stolen motor vehicles recovered.
He, however, said the recovery rate for motorcycles remained much lower, at 22 percent, with only 174 of 782 motorcycles fitted with digital plates having been recovered.
“This one will be solved. It is very low and this is countrywide. The tracker is in the GPS and not cameras,” Baryamwisaki said.
But implementation of the project repeatedly missed planned deadlines. At one point, government suspended the rollout after concerns about the contractor’s ability to supply the plates on time. Earlier investigations also raised questions about the company’s capacity, including concerns surrounding its limited previous experience and bankruptcy-related litigation in Russia at the time it was selected.
The concerns did not end there, with government in 2023 pushing back planned implementation dates after logistical problems, while in 2024 officials blamed delays partly on the effects of Russia-related sanctions and disruptions in international supply chains.
By 2026, the complaints had evolved from delayed plates into a full parliamentary investigation into the legality, cost, procurement, security value and financial structure of the entire project.
The parliamentary inquiry has already exposed a series of troubling issues, with Parliament-linked Criminal Investigations Directorate officers on Monday arresting two government officials, Nathan Gessa, attached to the Office of the President, and Moses Bekabye from the Ministry of Finance, following questioning over conflicting explanations surrounding the Shs714,300 digital number plate charge and evidence presented before the committee.
The arrests came as MPs struggled to obtain a clear breakdown showing how the Shs714,300 charge was calculated.
The committee has also been told about motorists being overcharged by intermediaries. In one case uncovered during inspections, a car bond operator was found charging Shs850,000 for a digital plate despite the official fee being Shs714,300.
Other receipts reviewed during the parliamentary scrutiny contained large lump-sum payments with no clear breakdown, raising concerns about how much motorists were actually paying for government services, private charges and registration-related processes.
The current crisis is not the first time questions have been raised about the digital number plate arrangement. Concerns emerged almost immediately after the 2021 agreement was announced.
At the time, reports questioned the due diligence conducted before JSCGS was selected, with documents indicating that the company was facing bankruptcy-related litigation in Russia.
Questions were also raised about its size and capacity, with records indicating that it was listed in Russia as a small and medium enterprise with a relatively small workforce compared with the scale of the Ugandan contract.
There were also concerns over privacy because the proposed system involved collecting and linking extensive vehicle and owner information to a surveillance and tracking system.
The project was presented as part of government’s response to escalating insecurity involving vehicles and motorcycles, particularly following the assassination of former Arua Municipality MP Ibrahim Abiriga and the attempted assassination of former Chief of Defence Forces Gen Katumba Wamala in 2021.
President Museveni subsequently directed the Works and Security ministries to introduce digital number plates capable of helping security agencies track vehicles in real time.
But what began as a security initiative has now become the subject of a parliamentary examination into whether the legal and financial foundation of the project was sound in the first place.
The Attorney General’s declaration puts the government in an uncomfortable position because it raises questions about decisions made over the past five years and whether officials proceeded with an agreement that did not satisfy fundamental legal requirements.
It also raises the question of what happens to the digital plates already issued, the infrastructure installed, the money collected from motorists and traffic fines, and the obligations accumulated under the disputed agreement.
The committee chairman, Mwine Mpaka, has said lawmakers have arranged to engage President Museveni through the Office of the Speaker over the impasse.
The committee has also summoned former and current government officials who participated in the original procurement process and is expected to hear a formal presentation from JSCGS before preparing its final report.
The factory itself has continued operating, with management reporting an output of about 2,500 number plate kits a day, or roughly 50,000 a month. The facility reportedly employs more than 300 Ugandans directly and supports about 900 additional jobs, with an 80 percent localisation rate.
But the existence of a functioning factory does not resolve the fundamental legal question now before Parliament: whether the agreement that created the entire arrangement was validly entered into and whether it can continue to bind the Ugandan government.
For motorists who have already paid hundreds of thousands of shillings for the new plates, and for taxpayers who ultimately finance government projects, the parliamentary inquiry could therefore become much bigger than a dispute over number plates.
It is now a question of who designed, approved and enforced a multi-billion-shilling arrangement that the Attorney General says was legally defective from the beginning, and who should account for the consequences.
