By Mulengera Reporters
At a time when everybody had given up on the possibility of ever ousting Jimmy Akena from the UPC Presidency for as long as Museveni was President of Uganda, 40-year-old Dennis Enap Adim emerged to end the reign of the man for whom he one time served as Personal Assistant for almost five years.
This was in the late-2010s when Akena had just taken charge as Party President from Olara Otunnu in a much-publicised coup detat of some sort that was enabled by the active support from state security agencies. After serving for roughly 5 years as PA, Enap moved on to establish his private legal practice being a law graduate from Makerere University and LDC.
In that period, Enap did a lot of sensitive errands for his principal Akena who was very fond of him. They had come to know each other years earlier when Enap used to chair the UPC Chapter at Makerere University. He used to organize public activities, rallies and public debates under the UPC banner and Akena used to be a key note speaker. That’s how Milton Obote’s son, who has been Lira MP since 2006, took note of Enap and liked his credentials as a dedicated young congressman.
And then earlier this year, it was declared by the Party’s Electoral Commission that the party presidency, which is the only directly elective position in UPC (president appoints all the rest), was vacant and congressmen and women were free to compete for it. Enap, who many despised as a joker, put in his application and was nominated as the only person challenging Akena.
In June, Enap concluded there was no need to compete with someone ineligible to seek re-election since the party constitution allows only a maximum of two terms. Having become President in 2015, Akena’s second term ends this very year meaning he wasn’t eligible for re-election to serve for another 5.
Enap, who Akena despised openly at press conferences at Uganda House including on the day they were nominated and unveiled to media reporters, filed a court case challenging Akena’s eligibility to be nominated and compete for party presidency after doing his 10 years. The judge agreed with him and that’s how Akena’s nomination was nullified. The court, whose officials had all along been favourable to Akena always ruling in his favour, held that he had been wrongly nominated as he wasn’t qualified in the first place.
And interestingly, Akena called a news conference days later saying he was pleased the Court had validated his UPC Presidency for the preceding 10 years and was therefore not going to appeal. Riding on the Court ruling, the UPC Electoral Commission had three of its four members resolve to communicate to the national EC that Enap was the new UPC Party President since he had been the only one appropriately nominated and was now unopposed.
This communication, lawful as it was, greatly riled Akena who reacted by firing the 3 party EC commissioners while saving the chairperson who disagreed with their pro-Enap resolution. Enap reacted by directing the three to remain in office besides firing their chairman who was pro-Akena, claiming this was his power to exercise now that he was the new Party President.
He is now the lawful President of UPC and is only waiting for official recognition by the National EC and eventually take over office at Uganda House’s level 6. Enap has been lucky in a way that his missiles came at a time when Akena has become isolated and weakened as a result of being at war with many people. Strangely but true is the fact that even several of the 10 UPC MPs from Lango are not comfortable continuing to be led by Akena (has been quarrelling with and expelling many UPCs in Lango). Notorious examples of these include Erute South’s Jonathan Odur and Apac Municipality’s Patrick Ocan who was recently reprimanded by members of a pro-Akena disciplinary committee some of whom want him out of the MP job to pave way for Akena’s relative Maxwell Akora who curiously is running away from Maruzi over land-related voter grievances.
ENAP SPEAKS OUT:
In a Saturday interview, Enap told Mulengera News crew that he had been mandated to become the UPC Party President between now (2025) and 2030. This will mark end of his first term. He has an ambitious plan to revive UPC and rebuild it into a modern party that can favourably compete with others power in the 21st century. Follow this YouTube link for the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8fev5CkKFc.
He says he will be prioritizing recreating the relationship between UPC and Kingdom institutions like Buganda, Busoga, Bunyoro and others. He believes these have genuine grievances against UPC because of the turbulent events of the 1960s when founding President Obote banned them. Enap says that his leadership will prioritize mending fences with all these, beginning with Buganda.
He also intends to mobilize resources locally and globally, where UPC historically had a strong diaspora presence, and use the proceeds to engage in fresh mobilization and membership recruitment so that young people are attracted into UPC. These will subsequently be leveraged to create new party leadership structures at the grass roots in order to reenergize UPC and create a new vibe that can make the party more attractive to the young people who constitute more than 70% of Uganda’s population and its future.
He also intends to engage in principled partnerships with like-minded parties and even when members choose to engage with NRM too, such engagement should be transparent and structured to benefit all party members and the country, and not just a few individuals and historically powerful families as has been the case under Jimmy Akena. He says in his case, engagement with all political parties will be consultative as opposed to being a decision of the party president and his spouse.
Under Akena, UPC has been accessing billions of shillings under the IPOD arrangement and Enap says under his leadership, such finances will be transparently and professionally managed as opposed to having a situation where only one man and his spouse makes decisions on how to expend such funds.
Enap also intends to reach out and find common ground with congressmen and women who had decamped because the Akena leadership was uncomfortable and always felt scared of vibrant and intelligent party members. He will be deliberately prioritizing bringing back eloquent and outspoken cadres like Higenyi Kemba, Patrick Aroma Guzi, Eric Sakwa, Kyeyune Senyonjo, Cecilia Anyakoit and others who had quit because the party leadership at Uganda House was treating them with suspicion. These to dominate media debates in Kampala on weekend Bimeezas.
He is also determined to build a broad coalition inclusive of UPC elders like Joseph Ochieno, Peter Walubiri, Olara Otunnu and others. He also intends to streamline and improve the relationship between the financing arm MoF and UPC, the party. This had become strained since Akena became party president and declared hostilities towards the Milton Obote Foundation, which owns Uganda House and other affiliated properties.
Enap is convinced Akena is now vulnerable and is finally going to be overcome, crashed and forced out of Uganda House’s level 6 which serves as UPC headquarters. He adds that without state backing, Akena is politically dead man walking. Enap intends to deploy staff and once again make Uganda House a vibrant party secretariat it was destined to be. He intends to make the appropriate staffing decisions at Uganda House so that the party gets to properly function as opposed to today when a paranoid Akena has no more than 10 members of staff manning the whole secretariat.
He intends to take over office at Uganda House real soon because he is now legally the UPC President who even state agencies like Byabakama’s EC will have no option but to recognize. He intends to name his executive in the coming days and to embark on identification of MP candidates for the party. The man, who will end up controlling up to Shs8.7bn from IPOD, says he intends to adequately facilitate each of the UPC MP candidates. He intends to concentrate on areas where UPC is strong and stands good chance to front winning candidates.
These include Lango, Acholi, Teso, West Nile, Eastern region and partly Greater Bushenyi. He also says in Buganda, there are places like Mityana where a UPC candidate could move mountains and deliver the MP seat (in the early 2000s UPC had an MP in Buganda, Wagonda Muguli of Buikwe North). Enap says that out of the more than 300 directly elected MP positions, his UPC administration intends to focus on fielding candidates in between 60 and 100 constituencies from where he is certain to register a minimum of 50 wins.
He says this will be a good start for him as UPC President while looking forward to doing even better in 2031. Enap says he is mandated to run for President of Uganda in his capacity as the UPC candidate, making it clear he is emotionally prepared for the task at hand though he remains open to negotiations with any potential partner from other like-minded parties.
He is fearful that, because he is determined to be on the ballot paper come 2026, Akena might attempt to diminish chances for the revamped UPC by running as an independent with the hope of fermenting confusion in Lango sub region where UPC is strongest. “He will most likely be fronting his own MP candidates who we shall be more than prepared to front official UPC candidates against,” says Enap who gratefully has remained civil and on talking terms with Akena even as they continue to disagree on the UPC top job. He says they have been occasionally talking and that Friday was the last time they spoke.
As to who he is, Enap was born and raised in Busoga sub region in Jinja where his parents lived. His mum was a Musoga and dad a Langi from Dokolo. He is a linguist who speaks flawless English, Luganda and Lusoga. He speaks Langi too though not as fluently, having lived with and been impacted more by relatives on the mum’s side. He is a lawyer in private practice, a practicing Christian and a family man with children and spouse.
Vehemently rejecting Akena’s claims that he is a state agent, Enap says he deliberately chose UPC since his days at Busoga College Mwiri whereafter he joined Makerere Law School. He did his elementary education in Jinja and considers Jinja to be his home more than his paternal ancestry in the Lango district of Dokolo. He says through observing his leadership style and how he will be reviving UPC into a stronger contender for political power in Uganda, people will gradually see and be able to judge for themselves who between him and Akena is a state agent.
He says there is a lot of evidence to show that Akena has always been a project of the regime and not him. That Akena was the proxy the regime used to frustrate Olara Otunnu who consistently was very outspoken against human rights violations and other governance excesses of the NRM establishment.
As a former PA, who used to handle Akena’s everything including financial things, there is a lot of damaging information Enap knows but he isn’t yet comfortable declassifying and releasing the same to the public because he has deliberately chosen the politics of civility. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
