Gen Kale Kayihura has spoken out regarding how he failed to harmoniously work with CID Director Grace Akullo. Officials that have been permitted access to Kayihura in his confinement at Makindye Military barracks say, the possible role of Akullo in his ongoing woes is one thing the ex-IGP has freely been discussing. “He believes Akullo is among the happiest seeing him end up this way. He believes whereas he always meant well, Akullo treated him with suspicion from day one and yet there was nothing,” said one of the lawyers who have been accessing Gen Kayihura and having private talks with him sometimes lasting hours. The lawyers say that Kayihura believes that unlimited access to the President and First Lady, two powerful figures that believed in her being a good police officer, made Akullo consider herself a future threat to her boss’ retention at the helm of the Police Force. “She always treated me with suspicion to the extent that on many investigations, she was more comfortable sharing her findings with my colleagues in the military than with me who was the IGP and directly charged with her supervision. This wasn’t good but I never reacted. I always kept quiet and I think she had problems of conscience,” Kayihura reportedly confided in one of his visitors at Makindye. He told one of his lawyers that this history of mistrust is the reason he doesn’t expect to be treated impartially in any investigations in which Akullo participates. “He maintains that the people overseeing investigations are old foes who can’t be trusted to act with the required levels of impartiality and Akullo is one of those he is uncomfortable with,” stressed a source that has several times interacted with Gen Kayihura since his incarceration at Makindye Wednesday last week. Indeed in their latest issue, leading with “Kayihura’s Fall: His enemies and the traps that got him,” the publishers of the weekly Independent news magazine make reference to Grace Akullo. They profile her as one of the most complicated relationships Kayihura had to content with his later years as IGP. In his private conversations, Kayihura has variously confided in family members, lawyers and personal doctors that he never attempted to antagonize Akullo in anyway yet it appears she always misunderstood him and never felt secure operating under his supervision. But the duo’s animosity to an extent related to dynamics outside police work. For instance the Pius Bigirimana/Kazinda OPM saga is one area where they sharply differed. Akullo didn’t believe the rhetoric that the veteran PS was merely a whistle blower in the OPM scandal and wanted him investigated more but her efforts were always overcome in a manner she considered pleasant to Gen Kayihura who was her boss as IGP. She was perceived by members of the Bigirimana/Kayihura camp to be sympathetic to Kazinda whose view was that Bigirimana wasn’t without blame. In fact, after it became apparent that Kayihura couldn’t succeed reconciling Akullo and Bigirimana, the IGG Irene Mulyagonja tried but she too failed after the Bigirimana camp felt she was biased in favor of her fellow lady and Born Again Christian Grace Akullo.
