Harsh sentence for prominent TikToker

A 21-year-old has become the latest Ugandan TikToker to be jailed after creating a video that reportedly insulted President Yoweri Museveni. Emmanuel Nabugodi pleaded guilty to four charges, including hate speech and spreading malicious information about the President. BBC News reports that he was convicted under a controversial amendment in 2022 to the Computer Misuse Act. It made it illegal to ‘write, send, or share any information through a computer, which is likely to ridicule, degrade, or demean another person, group of persons, a tribe, an ethnicity, a religion or gender’. Nabugodi, known for sharing comedy content to his 20 000 followers, made a film of a mock trial of the head of state. In it he called for Museveni's public flogging. In July, Edward Awebwa was handed a six-year sentence on similar charges to Nabugodi regarding a TikTok post. Three others are awaiting trial over content on the social media app.

The Monitor reports that Entebbe chief magistrate Stellah Amabilis said Nabugodi was not remorseful and the sentence would help prevent similar social media attacks. He was sentenced to 32 months' imprisonment. ‘This court hopes that by the time the convict leaves prison, he would have learnt that abusing people in the name of getting content is bad,’ she said. Amabilis added that he had the right to appeal against the sentence within 14 days.

Full report in The Monitor

Full BBC News report