By Mulengera Reporters
In July last year, PS/ST Ramathan Goobi, having come under pressure from powerful actors who erroneously think there is a lot of money coming to the sports sub sector, wrote to the board chairman announcing the removal of Dr. Bernard Patrick Ogwel from the position of being accounting officer for national council of sports.
The council chairman was being asked to nominate someone else to serve as the accounting officer for the financial year 2024/2025. The board chose Mohammed Bbale, a senior NCS employee, to serve as accounting officer.
Goobi explained that Dr. Ogwel had to be removed because of what the internal auditor general Fixon Akonya Okonye had stated about NCS’ accountabilities in one of his quarterly audit reports.
The issue was on utilization of warrants and also on the 5.3bn which NCS had dispatched to fufa, as instructed by the finance ministry, before the relevant supplementary budget approvals would fully be processed and approved through parliament.
Later on, a forensic audit of some sort had to be undertaken to establish what exactly happened. But as all that is being done, Dr. Ogwel had to be forced out of the accounting officer role even when no comprehensive wrongdoing had yet been established on his part.
What ordinarily ought to have happened is for the same to be done basing on the report of the auditor general duly processed by the relevant committees of parliament namely PAC and COSASE, which never happened.
These two accountability committees study and scrutinize the auditor general’s reports, by conducting proper public hearings at the conclusion of which their findings and conclusions can be tabled to be debated and considered by the whole house.
Once satisfied, the house expresses displeasure at the accounting officer and goes ahead to recommend severe sanctioning which can be removal or even prosecution. No such process was done or followed in Dr. Ogwel’s case.
All that happened was for the PSST to be prevailed over to lock him out depending on internal accountant general’s quarterly report, which is unprecedented.
Otherwise, the auditor general’s reports, which are supposed to be the basis on which accounting officers elsewhere have always been removed, had all along rated Dr. Ogwel’s performance as an accounting officer very favorably. For the last 6 years he has been general secretary and accounting officer, the NCS has always been rated 95% good performance and more.
And all their reports have been accompanied by unqualified opinion of the office of auditor general. This is the same as being declared to be very good.
When those baying for Dr. Ogwel’s blood, because they falsely think that the hundreds of billions for the 2027 AFCON tournament would be coming to NCS, failed to get anything nasty to demonize him, they jumped on the internal auditor general’s report to get something in the hope that his longtime ally, the education minister Janet Museveni, would consider him damaged and discard him.
This too failed because Janet has continued having confidence in Dr. Ogwel even after his controversial removal from the accounting officer role. She considers him to be one of the very high performing and dependable sons of Uganda from Lango sub region and in the sporting fraternity.
Had COSASE and PAC had reason to do their professional work of inquiring into the AG’s reports on NCS, if any, Dr. Ogwel as the accounting officer would have been summoned to explain himself. This never had to happen because in the 1st place, there was no such inquiry before any of these two accountability committees.
It later dawned on the anti-Ogwel plotters that, whereas the treasury instructions allow the PS/ST to choose or oust an accounting officer for one year, with PSST’s mandate being further explained under PFMA, the NCS Act preserves the power to appoint the council’s general secretary, who has also always doubled as the accounting officer, exclusively in the hands of the NCS board.
The general secretary, under section 40, is also the CEO for the council mandated to oversee all administrative matters of the council, keep custody of all its assets and to also operationalize all board decisions.
The general secretary is also mandated to advise the board and liaise with all sports federations.
All this clearly shows that there has always been a lot of work for Dr. Ogwel to do, as the general secretary, beyond just being the accounting officer. And as general secretary, Dr. Ogwel is more answerable to the board than to the PS/ST who is only legally concerned with the accounting officer bit.
It’s not hard to see or understand why haters and NCS saboteurs would be envious of Dr. Ogwel whose high performance has got him to be greatly valued by his line minister who also powerfully happens to be the wife of the president.
As general secretary, he had already done well on many things including corporate governance which is why all auditor general’s reports have come with unqualified opinion.
But Dr. Ogwel haters became even more restless when the minister entrusted NCS with more responsibilities which only increased and seemed more lucrative when Uganda’s AFCON 2027 bid materialized.
It became necessary for the GoU to do a lot of works costing trillions of shillings and a lot of this relates to rehabilitating stadiums and other sporting facilities across the country to increase Uganda’s suitability to be chosen, accepted and considered to host many future sporting events that will come subsequent to the 2027 tournament.
Many of these projects are moving well and on schedule which has made state house to appreciate and value the NCS general secretary even more.
All this good work has combined to make Dr. Ogwel sort of a victim of his own success. Those pursuing him erroneously think there be a lot of money at NCS’s disposal as the country prepares for AFCON, which is not the case.
Far from it, the money bit is being handled mainly by the PPP construction firms which the president sourced personally under the pre-financing agreement.
The NCS is only involved to ensure that there is the appropriate alignment and strict adherence to the country’s local PPDA-enforced public procurement laws as the contractors go about their construction and beautification works.
The NCS officials have to ensure all the necessary solicitor general approvals are obtained which partly explains why the solicitor general Pius Biribonwoha personally sits on the AFCON organizing committee which is co-chaired by the minister Janet Museveni herself besides Hon. Peter Ogwang.
Representing Mbaaga Walusansa and George Muhumuza, Kampala law firm Rugambanengwe & Co adcocates based on the voice mall in Bwebajja has actively been out and about writing and filing things in court while contradicting the wisdom of 1st lady Janet Museveni continuing to closely trusting and working with Dr. Ogwel at the time when, according to them, NCS is supposed to be handling trillions of shillings for AFCON preparations.
To them, the man from Lango sub region is unworthy and unfit to continue being in office at the time NCS is handling and overseeing AFCON preparatory work stretching in trillions.
They want Dr. Ogwel and Mohammed Bbale out because, in their view, being deprived of the accounting officer role equally makes him unfit to remain NCS general secretary.
The two protagonists have written and filed many documents castigating and demonizing Bbale, who was duly put there by the NCS board, as unfit to be the accounting officer because he works well with the much-persecuted Dr. Ogwel who they are working day and night to force out of NCS.
To them, seeing the two Bbale and Ogwel working well together (one as general secretary and the other as accounting officer) amounts to conniving to undermine the intention and intended objective behind the PS/ST’s interventions of last July.
The bitter truth is that as the general secretary, the NCS Act is such that Dr. Ogwel remains with supervisory mandate of some sort over all NCS staff including Bbale who has some other substantive role to which he will honorably revert the day he ceases to hold forte as the accounting officer. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
