By Mulengera Reporters
Parliament and the State House Anti-Corruption Unit (SHACU) have been petitioned to inquire into circumstances under which the disgraced Martin Nsubuga has continued to physically occupy public office at Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority (URBRA) 6 months after he was fired and ceased to be an employee there.
The former finance ministry junior employee from Mityana ceased to be the CEO at URBRA in August last year when the governing board refused to renew his contract and gave the responsibility to someone else to serve in acting capacity. While demanding criminal prosecution, the whistle blower reveals that since the day he was fired, Nsubuga never moved even an inch because it never sunk into his head that he was no longer the CEO. He has stayed put to demonstrate his contempt for the governing board whose members he has never forgiven fort depriving him of continued enjoyment of position that exposed him to endless travel opportunities and juicy allowances.
Formerly a junior officer at the finance ministry from where Moses Bekabye (then caretaker CEO) recruited him at URBRA initially as director supervision & compliance, Nsubuga was elevated to the CEO job in 2018. He was controversially given that by the board that was then chaired by lawyer Andrew Kasirye. He replaced the Kenyan expatiate CEO who had ceased to be.
When Hon Julius Junjura Bigirwa became board chairman and new members came in, the directors were shocked to find that URBRA had an CEO who had nothing on his file as an employee.
There was no public advert to which he responded, no application and no record of the recruitment process through which Martin Nsubuga became CEO. There was only an appointment letter, something the new board members (determined to put things right) found to be strange and irregular. When he was asked about the same, Nsubuga became angry and started accusing board members of being money-minded and being biased against him.
He started claiming that he was being witch-hunted especially after he failed to explain himself on shocking findings an internal audit report established against him as the CEO. These included Shs3m fuel allowances for the CEO’s office per quarter which was blown up in just one day. It was also discovered two fuel cards existed including one that was being used by the CEO’s spouse.
There were also questions about the circumstances under which three brand new vehicles came to be assigned to the CEO’s office and for his personal use when other members of top management were struggling to have basic transport means.
Questions were also raised regarding the circumstances under which 11 close relatives came to become part of URBRA’s staff team of 60 employees. And the 11 close relatives became URBRA employees during the period Martin Nsubuga was CEO. Around the same time, internal auditors raised a red flag about existence of ghost workers at URBRA who had been engaged to work and earn fat salaries purporting to occupy positions which don’t exist in the company structure.
There were also questions from the finance ministry regarding circumstances under which several billions were expended in the name of hosting the annual conference for the African Pensions Supervisors Association (APSA) that was hosted by Uganda.
The question was that billions of the Ugandan taxpayers’ money had been expended ostensibly to organize the conference yet each country delegation had financially contributed towards the same as is always the norm. Instead of soberly explaining, the CEO was always hostile each time such questions were raised by board members.
This created bad blood between CEO Martin Nsubuga and the board members who were also being tasked by the President through the finance ministry to explain why no progress was being made towards delivering on the task that required URBRA to roll out the informal sector members’ savings scheme targeting up to 22m members in comparison to NSSF’s mere less than 2m members or savers from among formal sector employees. The government view was that, thus way URBRA would be able to mobilize a lot of cash and savings the way their Kenyan counterpart does.
So, in the end, misunderstandings escalated and the board concluded that Martin Nsubuga, whose efforts to get back the CEO job through court were recently thwarted by Justice Musa Sekaana, wasn’t the right person to deliver on the high targets their political supervisors at the finance ministry had set for them.
That’s how his contract wasn’t renewed and instead of merely eating a humble pie and letting go, Martin Nsubuga (who lives in the Gayaza neighborhood) opted to fight and filed a Judicial Review application in the High Court. He pleaded re-instatement into the CEO job (without which he doesn’t seem capable of moving on with life) but the court declined.
Even efforts to use Minister Ruth Nankabirwa to arm-twist the President so that the man from Mityana gets back his job, didn’t yield. Gen Museveni turned his back on the whole thing after establishing that many of the things that had been alleged in favor of Martin Nsubuga, against the finance ministry were false and untrue regarding the performance of URBRA under Mr. Nsubuga’s tenure as CEO.
The big man from Rwakitura was hurt that stuff done by NSSF had been depicted to him as achievements for Martin Nsubuga-led URBRA. Museveni sought 2nd opinion from Matia Kasaija who, in writing, indicated to him it was all kiwaani. The President became so much annoyed and never allowed to give audience to anyone coming to plead for the now fired URBA CEO.
REFUSING TO LEAVE:
Even when he was in court battling board members for not renewing his contract (which by the way is their right), Mr. Nsubuga was holding onto the keys to the office of URBRA CEO, which he has never surrendered. He uses those keys to access the office on 4th floor as often as he wants and he has never handed over to anyone, prompting the Ag CEO to find where to work from.
The same Martin Nsubuga is yet to surrender and hand over the URBRA laptop and also enjoyed the CEO’s official vehicles for as long as he wanted and only abandoned it in the headquarters buildings’ parking basement after it developed mechanical problems which his former employer wasn’t prepared to spend on fixing.
He was removed and blocked from top management WhatsApp forum and mailing list but that never stopped him from continuing to hold onto and occupying the office at level 4. The official documents relating to the CEO office were all removed and only empty cabins and chairs and tables were left.
Even the support staff for the CEO’s office were withdrawn, effectively crippling him but still Martin Nsubuga stayed put. In order to avoid creating chaotic scenes and bad publicity for URBRA, the board has played it cool and let him carry on with his defiance for now 6 months.
The finance ministry hoped the man would ease out now that his efforts to bounce back as CEO through the court application haven’t yielded but the man has continued coming around to use this public office to do his own things since he can no longer transact any business for and on behalf of URBRA. The whistle blower suggests that Parliament compels Matia Kasaija as line minister to explain why all this has been happening and the board members haven’t found it prudent to change locks so as to prevent Mr. Nsubuga from continuing to access this public space.
The whistle blower also proposes that Parliament compels Matia Kasaija and the URBRA board to run newspaper adverts conspicuously indicating that Martin Nsubuga is no longer their employee so that no one gets to be misled that he is still a URBRA man merely because he continues coming to sit in the same office space he occupied before ceasing to be CEO. Gratefully, he doesn’t earn any salary anymore though he appears in some of the annual editions of the pensioners’ journal as CEO because as of that time he still was. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
