By Our Reporters
Using his Sunday Monitor Learned View column this week, Prof GW Kanyeihamba has prophesied doom for new IGP Okoth Martins Ochora (aka OMO) urging the already excited members of the public to react cautiously. Under the article titled “Not Everything Gen Kale Kayihura did was wrong,” Kanyeihamba argues that the circumstances that turned OMO’s predecessor Kale Kayihura from the good well-intentioned IGP he set out to be in his first months in office in 2005 to arguably one of the most scorned IGPs in Uganda’s history are still in place and in any case much more prevalent today than then. Kanyeihamba recalls how the original IGP Kayihura was popular, open-minded, consultative and very transparent in his approaches. He wished the best for the Force regarding professionalism and Kanyeihamba discloses being among the finest professionals then new IGP Kayihura invited to the police training facility to give career guidance, inspirational talks and generally speak to the cadet recruits because he wanted them to be all round and disciplined citizens serving in police. He adds that with time reality began setting in and Kayihura gradually shifted “loyalty from serving the country, the people and law to a strange philosophy of serving a political party and its leadership; from God to Caesar.” He adds: “It was then that police began serving individual leaders instead of Ugandans.” Kanyeihamba, who several times publicly clashed with Kayihura over police brutality, adds that having deputized Gen Kale for all these years, OMO is part of the system and that those expecting him to be different are in for disappointment. He wonders why OMO was always silent if he indeed was opposed to the way his boss was leading the force.
Kanyeihamba says whereas the public is very much excited with the OMO era changes, the new IGP has already made a very big blunder which is to so quickly reverse the transfers of officers Kayihura had undertaken in his last days on the job. Referring to the possibility of these very transferred officers cajoling their new boss to reverse his predecessor’s transfers, Kanyeihamba says such reversal is supposed to sadden sections of the public that had celebrated those very transfers when Kayihura first announced them. Kanyeihamba discloses writing a letter congratulating OMO but maintains that, his professionalism notwithstanding, not much should be expected from Ochora. The elderly Professor submits that the reversal of those transfers should have been preceded by wide consultations including with Ochora’s predecessor-short of that mistakes are bound to be make that Ochora might regret in future. He also argues that with an overbearing all powerful deputy in the person of Brig Mzee Sabiiti, Ochora is destined to gradually descend into “a mere shadow behind the throne.” Do you agree with the law professor’s harsh observations on the new IGP?
