By Our Reporters
On the prompting of President Museveni, IGP Okoth Ochora recently directed Director CID Grace Akullo to arrest and interrogate Martin Muhanga who hitherto operated as a very powerful internal audit staff at Janet Museveni’s Ministry of Education. Being cousin brother to powerfully connected veteran journalist Andrew Mwenda, Muhanga had over the years cultivated a strong powerbase at the Embassy House-based Ministry. Notwithstanding his junior rank, Muhanga had become so powerful he only reported to the President and Minister Janet Kataha. All this was an outcome of the unfettered access he had to State House where famously most of the decisions running this country are made.
THE GENESIS;
Investigations conducted by this news website show that Muhanga became very powerful at Embassy House a few years ago when Dr. Nassali Lukwago, who had been director Education Standards Agency (ESA), became the Permanent Secretary replacing her nemesis FX Lubanga who was renowned for decisive leadership and unrivalled firmness. He had been PS for many years and always had direct access to the President. Nassali was different; she had been a low profile official and believed she needed godfathers and power brokers, like Martin Muhanga, to hold forte at all very important ministry. She empowered Muhanga to unprecedented levels and the man from Toro kingdom started vetoing many decisions. “Whatever he vetoed became the PS’ position and many technocrats who were antagonistic to Dr. Nassali, who always perceived them as Lubanga proxies, suffered a great deal. You simply had to leave the moment Martin Muhanga advised so,” sources told this news website in a bid to account for origin of Muhanga’s influence at the Ministry. “Whatever required Dr. Nassali’s signature, Martin Muhanga had to be consulted and many contractors got into trouble because Muhanga didn’t like them.” The two became very close and Nassali believed she would always have the president’s ear as long as Muhanga lived.
THE MBABAZI LINK;
Those days Amama Mbabazi was Prime Minister and wielded a lot of clout as his position on a matter was always construed to be representative of Museveni’s views. JPAM had ministers he worked with very closely including Jessica Alupo under whom Nassali had to serve as PS. The two didn’t work together because each time she found Nassali wanting, Alupo always nostalgically made reference to her predecessor FX Lubanga who was a team player and seasoned PS. Education Development Partners too greatly appreciated FX Lubanga’s effectiveness, team spirit and the results-oriented approach. Alupo’s frequent reference to FX Lubanga during top management meetings could have been inadvertently innocent but it’s something that caused Nassali to designate her as hostile. And the Prime Minister Mbabazi, to whom she could have complained, was a strong ally of Alupo. So clearly, to survive at Embassy House where she considered many technocrats to be Lubanga’s proxies, Nassali needed a strong backer and this turned out to be Martin Muhanga. With Muhanga’s backing, Nassali began to openly take on Alupo and sometimes made her so vulnerable you could think the Minister from Katakwi was her subordinate. In the end, the fallout between Museveni and Mbabazi became apparent and this was a God-sent opportunity for Nassali as subsequent intelligence reports reaching the H/E indicated that the Mbabazi presidential bid was real and Alupo was one of the JPAM proxies in cabinet. In the end, Alupo was weakened and when she lost the NRM primaries to less prolific Violet Akurut Adome, her supporters blamed it on the invisible hand of then powerful IGP Gen Kale Kayihura and Dr. Nassali loyalists led by Martin Muhanga. This might have been exaggerated but in the days, weeks and months following Alupo’s political demise as Katakwi woman MP, Muhanga became more feared at the Ministry. Many of the technocrats, who had previously doubted his clout, asked for transfers to be taken to other ministries as it was increasingly becoming clear that the man had come to stay.
IN COMES JANET;
Well knowing education is a complex vast sector with a lot of donor interest, parliamentary and media scrutiny, Museveni felt Janet who eventually became education minister, replacing Alupo, needed to have a good powerful team of young incorruptible patriots around her. He introduced Martin Muhanga to Maama (as many fondly refer to the First Lady) saying “he is my son who has been helping me to expose and catch corrupt people at that ministry.” Museveni told the new Minister how many of the tips he had been sending to the IGG to catch thieves in the education sector were courtesy of “my good son Martin Muhanga; please make use of him to help you understand that ministry because he is very resourceful having been there with Dr. Nassali.” Janet too took this for gospel truth and subsequently introduced Muhanga to the new other technocrats the President deployed at the ministry to be part of her team. This gave Muhanga more clout and further cowed his adversaries at the Ministry. Somewhere along the way, Museveni got disappointed with Dr. Nassali (for reasons we shall refer to later) and signaled the coming of Dr. Stephen Kagoda at Embassy House as the new PS. In fact Mzee Kagoda even reported for work for a few days only for the appointment to be rescinded and Dr. Nassali, whose supporters were beginning to become nervous, bounced back. This returning Nassali opted to redefine who her friends were now going to be. She kept some and sidelined others and Martin Muhanga got the impression he was being sidelined. Nassali’s supporters started speculating that her clamping could have had something to do with Martin Muhanga’s confidential reports to the big man. In the same period, PSST Keith Muhakanizi and Doreen Katusiime, the workaholic lady who had been under secretary at education ministry, were also reported to the President for indifferently looking on as Nassali slept on the job and shrewd technocrats took advantage to misappropriate money. The three now (Nassali, Katusiime & PSST) became mobilized and started working towards undermining Martin Muhangi whose deployment as staff in the internal audit department is controlled by PSST Keith Muhakanizi. So the conflict with his former ally Dr. Nassali gradually weakened Martin Muhangi and made some of the technocrats who came to back up the First Lady to treat him cautiously as they kept their distance. Fearing reprisals resulting from being misunderstood, even the Nassali-era technocrats who knew a thing or two about Muhanga’s ineptness kept quiet preferring that the powerful leader from Ruhama would gradually find out for herself first hand as weeks turned into months.
NEW ORDER;
With his godmother Dr. Nassali gone and the new team acting very apprehensively towards him, Wycliffe Mugume who is the commissioner internal audit, whose supervision Martin Muhanga had always resisted and neutralized, began exercising his powers. He started squeezing Muhanga while demanding weekly reports from him. In a bid to resist this control, Muhanga tried to find new godfathers amongst the new Janet-era technocrats but wasn’t successful because Nassali had cautioned some of them to keep their distance. Apparently the new technocrats hesitated bringing him near fearing they could be spied on and falsely accused in future to both the President and First Lady. Being one unwilling to go down without a fight, Muhanga kept fighting back and occasionally tried to skip Mugume to directly report to top management, a practice the new Minister Janet discouraged. Muhanga tried to meet the new PS and this too wasn’t the successful. Every big man he tried to cry to, referred him back to Mugume his immediate supervisor.
ATTACKS LUBANGA GAL;
He subsequently became frustrated as even private businesses he tried to set up weren’t doing very well as workers became unruly and refused to submit to his authority as their employer. This mounting frustration made him to become very paranoid and he began reacting belligerently towards colleagues at work. People began seeing him as someone having petty wars with others and very recently, he got involved into a violent confrontation with ex-PS FX Lubanga’s daughter who works in the ministry. The altercation took place in the lady’s office and having got very terrified, that she narrowly survived the wrath of this rampaging Mutoro man, the young lady rushed to police and opened a case against Martin Muhanga. This was the old Gen Kale Kayihura police in which Mr. Muhanga had a lot of connections and the case didn’t make much progress even when the lady victim of the attempted assault wasn’t willing to give up. As work colleagues continued reflecting on the Lubanga daughter’s incidence, something more dramatic happened. One of the ministry contractors/service providers had a physical confrontation with Martin Muhanga who badly attacked him because of the way he was often speaking to one of the pretty young ladies working in the ministry. This caused things to pile up and what was initially corridor talk, that people only kept whispering about, reached the First Lady who is renowned for never tolerating nonsense or mediocrity in the ministry where she is political head. She shared her concerns with H/E the President who asked the Ministry-based SFCs to investigate more (there are many SFCs in the ministry).
MUHANGA IMPLICATED;
The SFC inquiry discovered much more than what Janet had been able to gather and confide into the H/E and the man from Rwakitura was furious. He resolved to crack the whip on Martin Muhanga whose continued stay was clearly going to ferment more intrigue and chaos at the Ministry, a thing that would politically humiliate the Minister Janet. As the President weighed the consequences of cracking the whip, more damaging reports reached State House. What were they about? Consultants, specifically hired by the World Bank, to run the GPE-funded projects and interventions based at Rwenzori Courts threatened to down their tools on grounds they were uncomfortable with the rampant strange audit queries Martin Muhanga was raising to them. Many of them considered this to be an act of harassment by the audit staff and blew the whistle to WB officials who protested to the President through diplomatic channels. The president is cautious not to annoy the World Bank again because they had after all become disgruntled with the Nassali/Alupo-era ineptness and suspended all their projects in the pre-Janet era. As he investigated, Museveni was shocked to learn through his SFC boys that Martin Muhanga had equally been controversial at the Works Ministry and the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) where he worked before coming to Embassy House. At JSC, Kagole Kivumbi who was the Accounting Officer, almost beat him up and the departure was very acrimonious. In the same period, Wycliffe Mugume the immediate supervisor who was innocently blamed when Muhanga failed to get promoted became apparent, also threatened to lock the office and stay at home protesting the same Muhanga’s continued stay at Embassy House. A blue eyed boy to the Minister, Mugume’s stay away was profoundly going to hurt work operations at the Ministry given that his entire department staff was joining him in boycotting work. That is when the President determined to crack the whip and Martin Muhanga, previously thought to be very patriotic, got detained by a group of police operatives that were directly being supervised by the new IGP Ochora and Grace Akullo, the CIID director. The duo considered this to be order from above and were determined to hold onto the man.
MWENDA INTERVENES;
Even when the relationship with his cousin is said not to be very excellent, Mwenda got concerned with the continued detention and reached out to the education minister begging pardon on behalf of his cousin brother. Mwenda also talked to the President and that is how the rapidly cracking Martin Muhanga was released on police bond. He immediately instituted a suit protesting his removal from the juicy post at Embassy House. He had actually sought court intervention to prevent PSST Keith Muhakanizi’s directive recalling him back to Finance Ministry for subsequent redeployment elsewhere but he wasn’t successful. And what is making it even worse for him is the fact that other Ministries and accounting officers are apprehensive having him in their internal audit departments. They think he is too controversial and is capable of sparking chaos in their ministries. There were fears that he would try forcing his way back to office at Embassy House and the SFC guys had orders to chain him immediately and have him charged with criminal trespass on the premises he has been occupying for years. Gratefully sanity prevailed after opinion leaders like Bob Kasango, Peter Ogwang and ICT PS Vincent Bagiire undertook to caution him on the dangers of insisting on a confrontational path. Their argument was that such a path, even when he thinks he is legally right, could dent his credentials as a good cadre and hurt his chances for future deployment by the big man from Rwakitura. Some of these leaders have previously undertaken some sensitive political assignments that were implemented with Martin Muhanga’s close involvement. That is how and why scenes of jubilation erupted at the Education Ministry last week as staffers celebrated the departure of a man they considered powerful and very complicated to work with. For comments on this story, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755.
