By Mulengera Reporters
Influential veteran journalist Charles Onyango Obbo (famous for co-founding Monitor newspaper) has said Bobi Wine can become Uganda president in a not-so distant future. Speaking to an influential audience in Oslo Norway a few days ago, Obbo said the Kyaddondo East MP has more than enough support of the young people to legitimately replace Museveni & become Uganda’s President. Obbo sought to contextualize his observation by insisting that there is alot Mr. Wine must do first to realize his dream. Obbo told a fully-packed audience that comprised of 100s of Ugandans living in the Scandinavian country that Mr. Wine can certainly make it once he keeps improving the way he has approached things so far. He said Mr. Wine must reach out to veteran political leaders like Kizza Besigye, Norbert Mao etc because there is a lot he needs to learn from their past political experiences. He also said the youth support he currently enjoy isn’t enough to get him there. He must forge alliances with other age groups and use the Besigyes & the Norbert Maos to reach out to millions of disgruntled Ugandans outside his nattive Buganda region. He said fortunately for the change-seeking forces, there are huge political discontent against Museveni’s long stay bin all regions including his nattive Western Uganda. Obbo said that to right things that have gone wrong under Museveni, one must prepare & eloquently articulate plans to carry out comprehensive reforms beyond just addressing youths unemployment and to accomplish all these, Mr. Wine must work with other political leaders beyond his youths constituency. He also confessed the Oslo audience that Mr. Wine had surprisingly grown into a role model and source of inspiration to the politically frustrated young people not just in Uganda but the whole of Africa and 3rd world as was clearly manifested at the Oslo meeting that was attended by youths from allover Africa. Obbo was specifically invited to present a paper titled: “The Bobi Wine effect: What’s going on in Uganda? A conversation on recent developments in Uganda with Charles Onyango Obbo.
” The event (that saw people crowd all the corridors just to listen the Bobi Wine idea being discussed by the much revered Obbo) was organized by the Norwegian Council on Africa (NCA). It seeks to defend human rights by promoting knowledgedge-based debate and advocacy on Africa. The aim is to influence the makers of Africa-related decisions in the West. NCA has existed doing this advocacy since 1967 & Obbo was chosen because of his renowned insightful analysis on Africa. At the debate, Obbo was occasionally heckled by an audience that clearly never accepted any criticism of Mr. Wine. Some accused him of abandoning the Capital Gang program and the Monitor newspaper in order to strengthen Museveni, a charge he calmly denied. The crowd never entertained any criticisms of Bobi and Obbo left convinced the youthful politician was actually more popular/impactful than he originally thought. Obbo criticized President Museveni’s UPE calling it crap because it had produced millions of unemployable graduates hence escalating the unemployment problem. But he also warned the crowd that removing Museveni wouldn’t be easy because the man from Rwakitura is extremely smart and experienced as there is no way he would have ruled a politically very assertive society like Uganda for 33 years without being a genius. This is one of the remarks the crowd never liked and caused Obbo to be of selling out. He cautioned them that Museveni would do anything (including escalating the army/police brutality) just to remain president. The crowd, that wanted clear answers, at some point accused Obbo of lacking clarity in his presentation. They only wanted to hear direct praises of Mr. Wine & despised Obbo for the disclaimers he kept putting on his statements. The veteran scribe from Tororo suffered many provocations and attacks but he remained calm and even allowed selfies at the end of the Oslo confrontation. He left convinced that many young people in Africa considered Mr. Wine a political Messiah for the continent. Obbo says at the end of the day, Bobi Wine might be more impactful accross Africa than in his home country Uganda.
