By Mulengera Reporters
Sources close to H.E. Museveni have revealed to this news website details regarding the last minute efforts that were made to water down the ruthless Deputy IGG Annie Muhairwe’s Kiteezi report. Sources say that, prompt as always, Muhairwe did her work on time and readied her report within 10 days as hard been required.
As the uncompromising Muhairwe got down to do her work, concerned KCCA officials also determined to do their part to circumvent catastrophe that was clearly being anticipated. One of these was Director Health Dr. Daniel Okello under whose direct mandate Kiteezi fell. At KCCA since the days of Jennifer Musisi, Okello had grown into one of the most powerful fellows at City Hall which had been his place of work for the last 13 years without break. Originally, he was Deputy Director but was elevated when his former boss exited.
Largely because public health is one of the most funded Directorates at KCCA (for it handles all garbage management issues, the KCCA hospitals etc), Okello had long become one bureaucrat for whom money was never a problem. He equally had accumulated lots of relationships around the city and became the go-to Mr. Fixer for a lot of power brokers and decision makers in the politics of Uganda. In fact, the last week chaos by the Lord Councilors is alleged to have been instigated by actors who desired to serve his interests after Lord Mayor Lukwago and his KCCA CEC had authored a report they intended to proclaim that day demanding for his interdiction over Kiteezi. CEC insisted that he is the man to whom Shs4.1bn had annually been entrusted to carry out regular flattening of the garbage heaps at Kiteezi. That if this had been done, the Saturday 10th September disaster would have been circumvent.
The Lukwagos intended to implicate Dr. Okello by demanding to know why garbage heaps weren’t being flattened yet the cash (Shs4.1bn) had annually been continuing to be availed to specifically hire the graders and purchase the required marram to keep flattening those heaps. Sources say that, having been around long enough, Dr. Okello had cultivated strong personal relationships inside City Hall with key veteran Lord Councilors at City Hall including his special friend Zahara Luyulika, the Authority Speaker at whose instigation the pro-Okello chaos erupted at City Hall last week as NUP Councilors curiously bayed for Lukwago’s blood as opposed to placing blame on the Public Health Directorate.
So, on realizing that the ruthless and uncompromising Annie Muhairwe had established his inescapable culpability, Okello secured the backing of key Acholi leaders in Kampala (they are many these days and like coming together to fight like hell whenever one of their owner gets into trouble). Because some of them hold sensitive positions in government, it was agreed that the lobbying gets effected through the Acholi Parliamentary Group or caucus some of whose members began mounting pressure on the President, while making all manner of political points in defense of their Okello. Having failed to cow Anna Muhairwe, who kept a keen supervisory eye on the chief Kiteezi investigator who was an Acholi from the IG, some of the MPs decided to direct their lobbying to the President and people around him (it’s also true some City baferes, claiming to have influence at the IG, reached out demanding for Shs150m to shield and clear one of the KCCA officials Muhairwe was clearly destined to implicate; this story will be detailed some other day).
The Acholi MPs’ argument was that Okello was a vigilant civil servant who had done his work namely detecting danger over the impending Kiteezi disaster and going on to write an internal memo signaling his superiors Dorothy Kisaka and Deputy ED David Luyimbazi whose fault it was, and not him, that nothing was done. This explains the timing of that leaked letter on social media, days after Kiteezi, indicating that the Director public health had done his part and the problem was with his two supervisors.
The Acholi MPs, while mounting pressure, indicated to State House handlers that there would be a huge price Gen Museveni would pay politically in relation to 2026 if their son Okello was sacrificed over a fault not of his own. This led to the rejection of the original report version which had attributed much of the blame at Okello’s door step especially over failure to put the Shs4.1bn to proper use-because the 10th September disaster wouldn’t have occurred if this cash had appropriately been used to regularly keep flattening garbage heaps at Kiteezi, as Lord Mayor Lukwago eloquently explained during his BBS Terefayina interview on Saturday.
Eng Luyimbazi had also been blamed heavily over the fact that, exercising powers delegated to him by Kisaka, he was the man (as DED) directly charged with supervising the public health directorate. When this seemed to be the direction and toning of the report, his backers at Kapeeka weighed in and impressed it on Gen Museveni that Luyimbazi’s Baganda co-ethnics would cry of marginalization if their son was made to carry the Kiteezi cross for alleged failure to effectively supervise Engineer Okello. The other dirt on Luyimbazi was that he too had been served a copy of Okello’s letter highlighting how Kiteezi was a disaster in waiting-and was equally culpable for the resultant institutional inaction.
Sources add that, even when his backers at Kapeeka lobbied to circumvent the problem on his behalf, Luyimbazi got premonition that the end was near and as he prepared for his working trip to Ghana (where the latest news of being fired got him this Tuesday evening) and cleared his desk-having concluded that Gen Museveni was going to do something dramatic. That he signed off all pending paper work, cleared his desk and attended to all his assignments well aware he wasn’t going to stay at City Hall for long-never mind that he and Kisaka had just got new contracts that would ordinarily run up to September 2027.
Another view among investigators was that Kisaka, even when there is nothing corrupt she established to personally have done, had to carry the ultimate cross because the ineptness of any individual staffer at City Hall makes her vicariously liable by virtue of being the overall head of the institution. That the back had to stop with her but this was watered down the moment members of the powerful prayer lobby group (defacto patronized by First Lady Museveni who is actually her patron of some sort in government) weighed in vigorously impressing it on the President that it would be unfair to sacrifice her over the Kiteezi landfill whose decommissioning had been recommended and unanimously demanded for by all City leaders since 2015 (basically seven years before she became ED in 2021).
This group of lobbyists impressed it on the President that in any case, Kisaka and her team had repeatedly been highlighting this problem while imploring Parliament to prioritize growing KCCA’s solid waste management budget allocation so that Kiteezi could get decommissioned and an alternative garbage dumping site established-only for the same to be (for years) disregarded as an unfunded priority because government doesn’t have money.
As all these arguments were being rendered, behind the scenes, it was clear to the President from the social media platforms, where Ugandans freely give their views, that the public was baying for some blood over Kiteezi. As a typical politician having his eyes on the next general elections, Gen Museveni (calculative as always) concluded that something had to be done to cool down and appease the angry public opinion. He opted to appease the general public while equally distributing anger and resentment among the three powerful lobby groups namely the Janet one who were vouching for Dorothy Kisaka, the Kapeeka one for Engineer Luyimbazi and the naturally very belligerent Acholi leaders who were out to defend and cleanse their son stinking rich Daniel Okello.
And going forward, because Gen Museveni realizes that te moderate approach Kisaka had deliberately deployed is more sustainable (for Kampala’s case) than Musisi’s iron-fisted way, knowledgeable sources say that the President might agree to Legal Affairs Director Frank Rusa-Nyakana becoming the Ag KCCA ED in the three months’ interim period as the Public Service Commission conducts a competitive recruitment process that will bring in the substantive ED, DED and Director Public Health.
It will be Kampala Minister Minsa Kabanda’s job to determine who of the current KCCA Directors takes over in acting capacity and the same will naturally be subject to consultations with the President. Nyakana is favored because he is best suited to carry on with the Kisaka-era moderation approach as opposed to confrontation which can portray Lukwago as being persecuted and thereby further diminish the President’s support among the populace in Kampala.
It’s also very possible that the President and those around him already have their own candidates for ED and DED slots but find it convenient to sanitize the recruitment of those same persons through the involvement of PSC. But ordinarily, what has to happen is that the PSC will originate the job advert, conduct the interviews within the designated three months’ period and thereafter recommend or send three names of equally eligible candidates to the President who will have the last word to determine who ultimately takes the thing. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at [email protected]).
