By Mulengera Reporters
Ernest Edengel, a primary school teacher from Busika town council in Luwero district, has been convicted and sentenced to serving a jail term of three years for defrauding poor widows and orphans, and thereby depriving them of their hard-earned money.
Edengel, aged 30, committed the offences of obtaining money by false pretence and of using another person’s simcard for unlawful purposes mainly between September 2024 and February 2025. The offences were committed in both Busika Luwero district and Pallisa in Eastern Uganda.
He targeted many people mostly elderly widows desirous to land scholarship opportunities for their children and qualified teachers or nurses desirous to get onto the government payroll.
Whereas only a few had the guts to come to court to give evidence against him, UCC prosecutors led by Dr. Abdul Salaam Waiswa say that Edengel’s victims are many as his mischief went on for years.
He would call his targeted victims and introduce himself to them as Hon Francis Mukula of Agule County in Pallisa. Using a simcard/phone number he stole from another Francis Mukula, Edengel would introduce himself as the Honourable MP before demanding money in order to use his clout to connect them to job opportunities mostly in Kampala where he claimed to have good connections with key decision makers at Education & Health Service Commissions.
The line on which he would direct them to send money was in the names of James Ojangole, who was supposed to be a close confidant of Hon Mukula. And the one he would use to call and cajole his victims was registered of Francis Mukula whose names were, by some coincidence, similar to those of the Honourable.
Some of his victims, who even came to Court to give implicating evidence, included Sindika Rose from whom Edengel extorted Shs1m promising to get scholarships for her children, Osron Peter from whom he extorted Shs800,000 promising him placement on the government payroll as a teacher and Daniel Oyet from whom Shs450,000 was extorted upon being promised the job of agricultural officer in Pallisa district.
When none of these promises materialized, the victims began to directly confront the real Hon Francis Mukula who denied being aware of what they were talking about.
It was him who reported the matter to the UCC Executive Director Nyombi Thembo who instigated his staffers to work with Police detectives attached to UCC to track down the perpetrators.
Edengel’s luck ran out in February 2025 when he was arrested from the Busika school where he had been hiding, having fled the Pallisa area upon realizing that he was being tracked.
He was in the classroom purporting to conduct a lesson and was caught with a total of 10 simcards which he had in his pockets. The ten simcards included the two; one in the names of Francis Mukula and another in the names of James Ojangole.
UCC lawyers brought witnesses who they cleverly led to give evidence implicating Edengel who in the end got overwhelmed and pleaded guilty.
This was days before the trial Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu rendered her judgment having concluded the hearing of both sides. Edengel accepted the offence and was convicted on his own voluntary admission of guilt.
He begged for forgiveness saying he had been misled by peer pressure and group influence. He promised to become a reformed person and to avoid bad friends once set free.
The offences he committed are created under the penal code Act and the UCC licensing regulations etc. He had also requested the Magistrate to set him free so that he goes out to get the job and work hard to pay back the money to the victims whom he defrauded.
On the three different counts, the Magistrate sentenced Edengel to a custodial sentence of 1 year on count one, two years on another and finally three years on another one. They are to run concurrently, minus the roughly 9 months he had served on remand at Luzira prison counting from 6th March 2025 when he was first remanded.
The Magistrate rejected the prosecution’s request to force Edengel to compensate his victims on grounds that there is no way he would ever have means to comply with such a sentence since he is going to locked up in Luzira up to almost 2029.
Hon Mukula Francis, who even feared to stand for re-election in 2026 because of the extent to which Edengel had demonized his name, welcomed both the conviction and the sentence, had nothing but praises for both the Magistrate and UCC lawyers, as he addressed reporters outside the Magistrate’s chambers. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
