By Mulengera Reporters
As of August 2018, Bobi Wine, who had started out jokingly the previous year by overwhelming both NRM and FDC to unexpectedly become the Kyadondo East MP, had become the thing-and a leading kingmaker of some sort in by-elections.
He had been a significant factor in Paul Mwiru’s Jinja, Betty Muzanira’s Rukungiri and Asuman Basalirwa’s Bugiri Municipality. The Arua by-election, following the assassination of Col Ibrahim Abiriga, came at a time when Bobi Wine was selling like a hotcake with his People Power sloganeering.
In the Arua race, quite early, two leading candidates emerged namely Kassiano Wadri and businessman Robert Ejiku (both of them independents) as FDC’s Bruce Musema trailed in 3rd position closely followed by NRM’s Nusura Tiperu who unexpectedly ended up becoming 2nd in the final tally.
The two leading candidates both desired to have Bobi Wine come and endorse them. They acted through emissaries. Wadri used Ibrahim Kasozi and the Gen Muntu group as Ejiku leveraged the deep personal friendship which had already been existing between Bobi Wine and lawyer Caleb Alaka.
The lawyer had earlier on developed bad blood between him and Kassiano Wadri even when they both hail from Terego county in West Nile. Wadri had been a close personal friend of Alaka for many years and many of his court cases had always been handled by him.
But along the way, Wadri became uneasy fearing that Alaka would leverage many of the high profile court cases he had been handling for litigants from FDC party, to develop political ambitions and stand against him in Terego where he had been MP for an eternity. Before joining politics as a firebrand from DP, Wadri was a senior civil servant (a Commissioner) at the Gender Ministry.
This bad blood resulted into Caleb Alaka getting sidelined from high profile FDC cases many of which were now being allocated to the AF Mpanga law firm. Sidelining Alaka from the FDC big stuff wasn’t hard at all because Kassiano Wadri was a big man in the party-serving as Mzee Augustine Ruzindana’s co-Deputy Secretary General (in charge of mobilisation) under overall SG Alice Alaso. He was also the Opposition Chief Whip in Parliament at some point for FDC whereafter he was made Chairman PAC.
So, by the time the 2018 Arua campaigns came about, there was no more love to be lost between these two sons of Terego. Wadri became even more offended when Alaka actively backed his business partner Ejiku and turned him into a very formidable competitor. He was independent and opposition-leaning at that, which made him share the Municipality’s diehard opposition vote with Wadri who had been in opposition his entire adult life.
Bobi Wine all along felt more comfortable campaigning for Ejiku because he had spent the whole year (preceding the Arua race) portraying himself as the flag bearer of all the grievances and aspirations of millions of jobless young people who continue to feel alienated and unwanted up to this day. So being younger, Ejiku had appealed to him more than Kassiano Wadri. This why it wasn’t easy for him to buy into the Kassiano Wadri stuff.
The oppostion was dessperate to recapture the Arua seat which their Godi Akbar had held before Col Abiriga came in 2016. There was growing consensus among opposition forces, outside the mainstream FDC, that Wadri deserved the medal so that it becomes his final chance to eat groceries in Kampala. He was marketed to Bobi Wine as better because, nationally, he had better name-recognition than Ejiku who some propagandists were already portraying as having sympathies for NRM.
A lot of time was invested in harmonising and trying to make Bobi Wine see that his political interests, as someone who was already weighing prospects to run for Presidency, would be served better if he allied with Wadri whose opposition credentials were well acknowledged and undoubtable. In the end, Mr. Wine agreed to drive to Gulu for a meeting for which Wadri also willingly travelled there to attend. It was in that meeting that it was decided to disregard Ejiku and endorse Wadri instead as Mr. Wine’s choice.
This is what happened and preceded Kyagulanyi’s coming on board to back Wadri. All this dispels extortionist claims by Mzee Kassiano Wadri that Bobi Wine pocketed Ejiku’s Shs6m and that he was desperate and imposed himself onto his campaign trail because he had established him to be the strongest in that race. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
