By Mulengera Reporters
In an online video clip that has since gone viral, veteran opposition politician and ex-Arua Municipality MP Kassiano Wadri has made controversial claims against the NUP President Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine.
Wadri says that the role of Bobi Wine in his victory has always been exaggerated to seem beyond what it was. That he was initially never Kyagulanyi’s choice for that MP race that resulted from the assasination of Col Ibrahim Abiriga of the National Resistance Movement.
The year was 2018 and Wadri, who in 2016 had lost his Terego County MP seat to an NRM candidate, decided to relocate to Arua Municipality for which his FDC party had fronted young man Bruce Musema who had previously stood against Abiriga.
Wadri took advantage of the Muntu-induced split in FDC and ran as an FDC-leaning independent after Najjanankumbi refused to give him the party ticket on grounds it would be morally unfair to Bruce Musema who had been running and nurturing the party structures in the Municipality.
Bobi Wine, who had just turned tables on both NRM and FDC in Bugiri Municipality where he successfully backed Asuman Basalirwa and was desperate to test and demonstrate his anti-Besigye popularity beyond Kampala and Buganda, plunged into the Arua trenches and the public was made to believe that Kassiano Wadri’s eventual victory was solely an outcome of his endorsement.
Wadri now says that wasn’t the case because Kyagulanyi came only a few days to the voting day when the FDC founding deputy SG was already doing very well. He says that actually, he was never Kyagulanyi’s choice until circumstances dictated.
Wadri says that Kyagulanyi’s original candidate was the NRM-leaning independent moneybags Robert Ejiku. That Bobi Wine set off from Kampala to go and campaign for Ejiku who had even facilitated him with Shs6m, as fuel and accommodation facilitation, which was delivered to the Magere man through renowned Kampala deal maker and lawyer Caleb Alaka, who also hails from West Nile.
Wadri says, because the whole venture was based on opportunism and not principle, members of Kyagulanyi’s advance team (who badly wanted to associate with a winning candidate to create an impression that Mr. Wine, who had moved mountains in Bugiri, was a king maker in Arua too) made a quick assessment and advised their Principal to turn his back on Ejiku (whose Shs6m has never been refunded) and suddenly embraced him (Kassiano Wadri).
Wadri recalls how a desperate Kyagulanyi sought to meet with him on a Sunday evening to discuss a few things before joining his campaign trail the following day which was a Monday. Wadri says its therefore untrue to brand him as an ungrateful politician who would have lost that 2018 by-election race without Bobi Wine’s endorsement. The NUP camp is yet to officially come out to contradict Kassiano Wadri’s narrative. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
