By Mulengera Reporters
As he prepares to get nominated for the position of President, UPC’s Jimmy Akena faces an uncertain future-just like is the case with his wife Betty Amongi, who is seeking to become new Woman MP for Lira City.
For sometime, it seemed clear that the UPCs were having an upper hand in the politics of Lira City and much of Lango with Akena spearheading mobilization to keep NRM out of Milton Obote’s home region.
The anti-Museveni rhetoric seemed to be everywhere but things have rapidly been changing to the extent that the narrative is now clearly in favour of Museveni especially on Lango WhatsApp groups. Groups like Lango Onotte (Lango United), Lango Ateni (means Lango Truth, Lango reality) etc have for long been used to shape political opinions in Lango.
Each of these groups has close to 1000 participants and these are mainly the educated opinion leaders scattered in all sub counties and electoral areas of Lango. As at the beginning of this year, the anti-Museveni forces were having upper hand with the likes of former Minister Mzee Omara Atubo spending the whole day putting out anti-Museveni rhetoric.
Atubo, a former Minister in Museveni’s government and former MP for Otuke County, would lecture and his messages would be replicated to reach near and far. He would dominate and shut up all Musevenists who originally were in the minority. The Musevenists had originally concentrated on dominating radios and other mainstream media platforms only to realize the opposition UPCs were reaching more people via WhatsApp forums.
When this mistake was realized, a decision was taken to reverse the trend very quickly. The likes of Minister Jane Ruth Aceng, GCW Hamson Obua and a few other Musevenists identified young Langis who went to school in the late 1990s and early 2000s at the height of LRA and Karamajong raids instability.
Many of these had their families flee their homes because of instability and Sam Engola, who for long was the lone Musevenist in the sub region, got Gen Museveni to support their education at KIU, Kyambogo and Makerere where they accessed good education and graduated with degrees.
Currently, many of these are active consequential people in the academia, civil society, intelligence, Police, private sector, aviation and the army. Others are medics and also in consultancy etc. Lango sub region generally remains poverty-stricken and these now are the guys with money, connections and influence-and they also have numbers. They easily outnumber the old guard who are chiefly UPC.
They hail from different parts of Lango and they have managed to outnumber and neutralize the older ageing intellectuals who hail from West Lango areas like Kole, Oyam, Apac, Akokoro etc.
The new influencers and intellectuals for Lango attribute much of their success to Museveni without whose State House scholarship they believe they wouldn’t have acquired the education that has enabled them to wield influence and the social status they have today. They are mainly from the East Lango districts of Alebtong (Moroto) and Otuke.
They occasionally appear on radio talk shows and they are fluent in both English and Langi.
Those who are in security, Police and UPDF have access to sensitive personal information about anyone and this has put them in a position to blackmail and silence anyone who comes up to demonize Gen Museveni or any other NRM aspirant.
Even those who are not directly in security, they can access medical, financial or banking personal information about anyone. They can also access historical information from intelligence about any big person in Lango including those who are UPC during the day but work with and for Museveni at night. This information is carefully deployed to cow and silence any big person that comes up on WhatsApp to contradict NRM.
Many of them are added onto the WhatsApp group using pseudo names and can’t easily be identified and exposed for who they are. Many are using intelligence-procured sim cards, making it hard for their real identity to be established. Sources say that Gen Museveni is fearful that Jimmy Akena’s insistence to take him on for Presidency is going to diminish his overall electoral vote by not less than 2.5m votes in Lango.
The big man is angry that Akena, who has always been his ally and enabled him beat opposition in Lango, has insisted on standing for Presidency and having failed to talk him out of the 2026 race, the system has decided to come hard on him.
Milton Obote’s son will now have to be demonized, cowed and isolated, which is why the Musevenists on WhatsApp forums like Lango Onotte and Lango Ateni have deliberately gone rogue on Akena. They deploy a mixture of facts and propaganda to overwhelm and cow whoever stands up to contradict Gen Museveni or any of his cadres (examples being Aceng, Engola, Obua etc).
This was over the weekend successfully deployed against the Akena-Betty Amongi duo. The UPC first couple spent some good money and procured seedlings to distribute among farming households around the most poverty-stricken parts of Lira City (namely the Divisions of Ngetta, Boroboro, Parapwor & Amucha). The duo had properly procured these seedlings from the Uganda Prisons outlets and this is legitimate business and source of NTR for Uganda Prisons. However, the tech savvy Musevenists distorted this and made the Akena couple seem scandalous.
It was falsely claimed that this was stuff meant for prison inmates and donating such to farming households in Ngetta, Boroboro, Parapwor and Amucha Divisions (which remain rural despite being under Lira City) demonstrated the extent to which the UPC leadership despises the people of Lango. It was also claimed that the seedlings had been fraudulently obtained from the Uganda Prisons because the UPC First Lady used her position as Minister to access the same.
UPC supporters tried to counter this propaganda on the WhatsApp forums in Lango but weren’t successful because the Musevenists easily outnumber them on every such platform. Every post that is pro-UPC is marched with 20-30 posts which are pro-Museveni and pro-NRM. At the end of the day, the propagandists won and the Akenas ended up not reaping the anticipated political dividend from their seedlings’ investment.
For some unknown reason, WhatsApp chats’ participants who used to be pro-Amongi and pro-Akena have somehow disappeared and this could be evidence of exhaustion. The UPC First Lady used to have upper hand as majority participants always defended her view while demonizing Aceng. Everyone is wondering where all that support has disappeared to.
SHUTTING UP OMARA ATUBO:
The same bullying tactics have since been used to humiliate Mzee Omara Atubo who for years has been busy on such forums demonizing Museveni and his NRM while exaggerating his credentials as a UPC.
He would be belligerent in his posts and Musevenists restrained themselves not to contradict his posts. But the younger elites from Lango have lately been on him day and night and Atubo has finally been extinguished.
On Lango Onotte and Lango Ateni, the Musevenists stated that Omara Atubo has never had UPC at heart and referred to the 1980 campaigns when he was sympathetic to DP’s PK Semogerere. They added he had no moral authority to castigate the NRM because he was the state minister for defence in the late 1980s when insecurity was at its highest. That he never used that position to shield poor Langis in the community against Karamajong cattle rustlers.
They also referred to history and asserted that Atubo was among the political actors who were against Obote’s return to be President of Uganda during the Moshi Conference of 1979. They claimed that while in the Tanzanian exile, Atubo was closer to Museveni of Fronasa than to Milton Obote, a fellow Langi. They also referred to Maj Gen David Oyite Ojok’s heroic return to Lira town for the first time after the ouster of Idi Amin.
That during that function, large crowds of Langis came to meet and greet their son Oyite. Gen Museveni, who was then in Military Commission, and part of the same UNLA was among Oyite’s guests at that rally. Because it was already clear he was anti-Obote, organizers ensured that Museveni wasn’t given prominence at that event.
Speakers had been directed not to even recognize him but Omara Atubo was the only Lango leader who recognized Museveni and made mention of his name. The propagandists have been referencing on all this stuff on the WhatsApp forums to portray Omara Atubo as a treacherous politician who was always for Museveni even in circumstances where he had a clear choice to choose between Museveni and Milton Obote.
In the end, Omara Atubo has ended up being comprehensively extinguished and no longer posts anything on WhatsApp groups where he used to be a dominant voice. He can no longer post anything demonizing Museveni and other NRM aspirants or they make personal attacks on him including making contemptuous reference to his age. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
