By Mulengera Reporters
At Katonga, the PFF Secretary General Ibrahim Semujju Nganda managed to get roughly 10 fellow FDC MPs to decamp from Najjanankumbi and join him. There are others who initially had come on board but later on developed cold feet and crawled back to Najjanankumbi where Secretary General Nandala Mafabi and POA call shots.
The two are like co-Presidents. Some of the MPs who initially flocked with Semujju Nganda but later on crawled back to Najjanankumbi include PP Okins, Atkins Katushabe, Denis Onekalit of Kitgum and others.
Those from Teso also crawled back after realizing that POA and his co-President Nandala Mafabi would cause them trouble at election time. Whereas POA hails from Teso, Nandala marries an Itesot woman and he has significant influence as omuko (in-law) in especially urban Teso areas.
It has since emerged that a larger number of FDC MPs would have defected to PFF like their other colleagues except that they were told about Najjanankumbi’s readiness to use IPOD billions to give each incumbent MP Shs300m as a contribution to finance their 2026 re-election budget.
The condition for them to qualify for the money was and remains to simply stay away from Katonga and don’t join Semujju Nganda’s PFF. Sources say that this offer of Shs300m grant impacted mainly FDC MPs from Kasese, Acholi and a few other parts of the country.
But also the delayed progress in the registration of PFF also caused some incumbent FDC MPs to generally view the Semujju Nganda project disfavorably and with caution besides making many of them unprepared to promptly bash Najjanankumbi. There are fears that Najjanankumbi may never fully honour their word on the promised Shs300m in which case the incumbent MPs might end up receiving less than Shs100m each.
Gen Museveni has already signalled readiness to ensure that the remaining Shs35bn of the IPOD money before this term of government ends is equally shared among all parties with representation in Parliament regardless of numerical strength. If that comes to fruition, FDC will end up receiving up to Shs5bn or even more.
In fact, by doing that Gen Museveni will score many points including reconciling UPC President Jimmy Akena and Jeema’s Asuman Basalirwa who have been very outspoken against the Movement for reneging on this understanding and requirement for parties to share the IPOD money equally going into the election year. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
