By John V Sserwaniko
Incarcerated ex-IGP Gen Kale Kayihura was earlier in the week visited by an influential Minister who was renowned to be his very good friend during his hey days. This being the case, Gen Kayihura opened up like never before. The two interacted and freely chatted on almost everything but most importantly on the very damaging allegations that Kayihura killed his protégé Andrew Kaweesi. Gen Kayihura, at length, discussed his relationship with the late reminding the minister how he got Kaweesi from obscurity and rapidly promoted him into a powerful police officer everybody came to admire. “This wasn’t because he was without blemish. He was fallible and had many short comings like any other human being. In fact I landed into problems with many senior officers who hated me for always keeping a blind eye on Kaweesi’s mistakes. There were heaps of files of things reported to me as his supervisor accusing him of this and that but I sat on all of them. I never wanted to antagonize him because he was a good officer. I liked him for meticulously delivering all the work that I assigned to him. And each time I gave him a task, I would go home and sleep comfortably. I could afford to switch off my phone and sleep which wasn’t the case with others. Kaweesi would deliver without calling back blaming failure on circumstances around him. I always trusted his sense of judgment,” the minister quoted Kayihura as saying from his Makindye detention facility. Kayihura went on: “On the other hand I had more senior officers like Grace Turyagumanawe; very well-intentioned but never as efficient as Kaweesi in the way they did tasks. When I tasked such officers with work, my phone had to remain on 24/7 because quite often I would end up doing the task myself but not so with Andrew Felix Kaweesi.” Kayihura disclosed to the Minister that: “I was always aware time would come when I’m not the IGP anymore and someone else would take over and in my mind that had to be Kaweesi. He was a very nice young man. People say I killed him? How could I do such a thing? In fact if I ever felt threatened by him, there are many other things I would do to fix him because things were always reported against him including that Wamala case. I would get him detained and charged for a disciplinary offence or get some excuse to demote him to a lower rank. Why kill him really?” Kayihura then told the Minister how he got the news of Kaweesi’s death that fateful day of 17th March 2017 morning. “I was in my house and I had just spoken to my wife [Angela]. She is my witness because she was in the house with me when I got the phone call that Kaweesi was dead. I was in total shock and very confused that I hit the wall inside my house and fell almost becoming unconscious. My wife had to help me up because I was full of confusion and total disbelief. Here was somebody who had helped me streamline that PR department and previously he had done a good job as Director HR. Because of the systems he put in place, staff no longer reported late for work.” Kayihura conclusively told the Minister: “I feel even more betrayed that for all the good things and the professional support I extended to him as his supervisor, I can end up being accused of killing Kaweesi my good comrade. If you get a chance to speak to the President please tell him for me that I would rather be executed very quickly, if they are indeed convinced that I killed Kaweesi, than having to be subjected to such a very humiliating trial.” The minister said Kayihura told him this is a possibility (being executed quickly) he had as well discussed with his lawyers prior. For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755.
