Cash News
At about 9.20 pm on June 28, 2018, the then under-fire Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) Director General, Ms Jolly Kaguhangire, agreed to vacate office as instructed by the board two days earlier.
This was pending investigations into alleged corruption, abuse of office and insubordination.
That evening Ms Kaguhangire communicated the decision to then board chairperson Emely Kugonza, and the two approved that a brief handover ceremony be held the following day at 3pm.
Ms Kaguhangire also requested not to be booted like a “chicken thief” and be allowed to “say a word” to the staff who would be present as their interim boss, Basil Ajer, also the director in charge of SMEs. UIA is the statutory body charged with investment promotion and facilitation.
Before accepting to vacate office Ms Kaguhangire had had several back-to-back telephone conversations with, among others, her line supervisors—the junior Investment and Privatisation minister Evelyn Anite and Finance minister Matia Kasaija.
During the conversation with Mr Kasaija, sources familiar with the conversation intimated the minister “regretted” the ugly turn of events. He also counselled Ms Kaguhangire that the board was acting in its authority and interdiction is a customary procedure in government.
Sources, however, also intimated that Ms Kaguhangire’s decision to step down was informed by a tipoff that some board members had suggested that she be booted out of office using police if she remained defiant. She had been suspended a day earlier on June 28, to pave the way for the said investigations.
The following day, a Wednesday, she wrote back saying she would remain in office as the executive director carrying out her duties on grounds that the board decision was void.
On Friday, June 29, journalists were tipped off of the handover ceremony to showcase the “board’s victory.” However 30 minutes later the UIA director general’s office, then on the second floor at Tweed Plaza on Lumumba Avenue, remained closed, which prompted forcefully breaking the door. Ms Kaguhangire never showed up.
Ms Kaguhangire was cleared of the accusations by an ombudsman-led investigation but the board declined to reinstate her. This was hardly surprising if anything because Ms Kaguhangire’s brief tenure was marred by frenzied squabbling with the board. Except, since then, UIA and the Finance Ministry have been in running battles.
Mr Kugonza was at the time also eyeing Mr Kasaija’s parliamentary seat of Buyanja County in Kibaale district during the 2021 polls. To the reprieve of the latter, Parliament on July 30, 2020, approved the creation of 46 new constituencies, during which move, Buyanja was split into east and west. Mr Kasaija is MP for Buyanja West as Mr Kugonza is MP for Buyanja East.
During the ruling NRM primaries later another pickle emerged for Mr Kasaija—Paul Kyalimpa emerged to challenge the incumbent. On December 7, 2020, Mr Kyalimpa gave up challenging the incumbent after being appointed deputy UIA executive director. He had lost the primaries to the incumbent by 10,326 votes but protested the tally and vowed to stand as an independent.
In May 2021, the current UIA Director General, Mr Robert Mukiza was appointed. In June 2024, Mr Kyalimpa quit his position amid the “service award” turbulence that tore Ms Anite, on one hand, and Mr Mukiza,and former UIA board chairperson (was a board member since 2018 and as chairperson since May 2021), Mr Morrison Rwakakamba, on the other hand, wide apart.
The trio’s camaraderie, often displayed on social media and at functions in and out of the country, had been enviable. The bruising fallout that ensued was unimaginable. During a meeting at State House in June this year, Ms Anite fought back tears—albeit in vain—as she defended herself against a raft of allegations levelled by her former bosom buddies.
Four months later, this week it emerged that Mr Kasaija had dissolved the entire UIA board. Mr Rwakakamba announced the end of his tenure as board chairperson in a post on the microblogging site, X, on Tuesday.
It also emerged, in the same vein, that Mr Kasaija had on September 26 tapped his political assistant Mr Robert Kyamanywa as the new board chairperson. Sources familiar with the matter indicated that Mr Kyamanywa was first floated to fill the vacant deputy director general position. However, the old board declined to confirm him unless there was a written directive.
“Is there a law that bars you from appointing your relative or friend if they are qualified?” Mr Kasaija asked this reporter on Thursday afternoon when contacted on the matter.
When a conflict of interest charge was proffered, Minister Kasaija responded with an emphatic “Hapanaaaaaaa (no way)” before declining “to entertain any other question on the subject.”
Since June 2011 when Ms Maggie Kigozi wrapped up her 12-year term as UIA director general, the parastatal has had a record of seven director generals—three substantive and four in acting capacity. Hardly has there been peace at the top level, marred by investigations by the ombudsman, interdictions, and accusations between top management and the board.
The ugly scenes that hit crescendo with the Kaguhangire-Kugonza-led board fallout, appeared to have petered out since the May 2021 appointment of Mukiza and Rwakakamba, but the Monitor understands that another showdown is on the cards. The induction of the new Kyamanywa-led board is reportedly slated for next week.
Sources intimated that while UIA “as an institution has a cocktail of problems”, the ugly scenes since 2017 have been compounded by “their political supervisors” in the Finance ministry.
“Everything is okay until you play ball. Try to resist and its all-out war,” one senior official, who preferred anonymity, intimated.
The ombudsman is currently finalising a report around investigations into claims of mismanagement that saw UIA’s offices on Baskerville Avenue, Kololo, raided in mid-January 2021.
Sources told the Monitor that some of the reports of corruption, influence peddling and wheeler-dealing by Finance ministry honchos and UIA officials have been reported to the President, yet action has not been forthcoming.
One of the cases is that of finance honchos and UIA staffers soliciting a $1.5m (Shs5.4b) inducement to bless the deal for the acquisition of 20 acres of land inside Namanve Industrial Park.
“After frustrating us, and after the President told them to acquire this land, they then told us that they would bless the deal to buy the land at $2.6m but under one condition. Imagine we were only going to remain with $300,000 of the $2.6m,” one person close to the deal narrated to Sunday Monitor.
Inexplicably, one of the honchos had months earlier told the group selling the land to drive to their hotel upcountry and wait. “We waited for a week for a meeting we thought would be in a day or two.”
In November 2015, the government offered Dubai Port World (DWP) a deal to develop an internal container depot at Namanve. DWP were reportedly brought to Kampala by Enrica Pinetti, of the specialised hospital at Lubowa on Entebbe Road.
Consequently, the President directed the Finance ministry to acquire at least 100 acres for the venture. In 2017, UIA requested to buy land, as part of the expansion of the Namanve Industrial Park. The former Finance ministry PS, the late Keith Muhakanizi, started fast-tracking the process but was removed from the position along the way.
The owners of the land were sued for allegedly encroaching on a wetland, but they won the case. Along the way, UIA, sources indicated, it would only acquire the land if the Finance ministry endorsed the deal.
In August 2023, the landowners managed to secure an audience with President Museveni. During the meeting, sources indicated, both Finance and UIA officials were shocked to see the group there.
“The President said the land must be bought because there was no free land in Wakiso and Mukono,” the source indicated.
After the meeting, the Attorney General instructed the Uganda Land Commission (ULC) to study the matter and report. Inexplicably, ULC officials told the group that Wakiso and Mukono are “congested” but free land could be secured in northern Uganda. As such, ULC wrote a winding report inferring that part of the land is in a wetland.
During a follow-up meeting in December 2023, President Museveni was shocked to learn that the deal had not been concluded. Upon inquiring where exactly the said land was located, he asked them: “I know that place, how can a wetland be on a hill?” The room fell silent.
The investors asked the President for a private meeting “to educate him properly on why and how” closing the deal on the land was taking so long.
“We told him everything, how his officials had asked for $1.5m. He was shocked,” one person close to the group said.
The Finance ministry and UIA were consequently told to see through the deal. During the State House meeting in June over the turbulent service award, both the Finance ministry and UIA officials were asked why closing the deal had taken that long. There was silence.