Photos: YouTube
Today, Gen. Museveni retired over 50 top Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) officials as well as generals at the State House, Entebbe. Today’s ceremony arrives on the back of an ongoing retirement exercise of UPDF soldiers, where an initial 260 senior soldiers were retired yesterday at the Land Forces Headquarters in Bombo, Luweero District.
The Bombo ceremony was presided over by Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the NRM junta’s heir apparent.
The Land Forces Camp Commandant, Major General Lucky Joseph Kidega, said 62 colonels, 65 Lieutenant colonels and 133 majors were retired under the unblinking eye of Gen. Kainerugaba. Gen Kainerugaba asked the retirees to remember that they are part of the reserve force, which is equivalent to slightly lengthening the short leash the Junta must keep them on. The retirees marched to the Headquarters Quarter Guard at Bombo after they were given their discharge certificates.
As Gen. Museveni and Gen. Kainerugaba retire army personnel, we recall that on September 20, 2021, Gen. Kainerugaba revealed that the UPDF would recruit 2,000 graduates.
“As Commander Land Forces of UPDF and on the instructions of the Commander in Chief [President Museveni], I declare that we need 2,000 graduates in the next recruitment. We shall ensure they are the right people for the job. They will serve our great country just like we did. God bless Uganda!” Lt Gen Muhoozi tweeted.
The last time the army recruited such a big number of graduates was in 2001, most of them being clinched by the unyielding death grip of Gen. Kainerugaba. This hiring and retiring exercise is essentially being done to prune the army of senior officers who are not likely to accept a Kainerugaba presidency.
This exercise started a long time ago, but was revealed by an April 29th, 2013, letter written by Gen. David Sejusa in which he wrote that Gen. Kainerugaba has “hatched an evil and extrajudicial plan of stage-managing the attack on Mbuya barracks so as to frame some senior members of this government especially I, [Prime Minister] Amama Mbabazi and CDF, Gen. Aronda and those perceived to be anti-Brig. Muhoozi project.”
To date, all three persons mentioned in the letter are no longer in government, as predicted by Sejusa.
While the attack on Mbuya barracks has been widened to all barracks as the Junta cleans house by retiring and hiring soldiers whose loyalties must be tempered by the Muhoozi project.
If you think this is an institutional instead of personal exercise of retiring and hiring, how come the UPDF spokesperson, Brig Flavia Byekwaso, at the time when Gen. Kainerugaba tweeted that he was recruiting graduates last year, was clueless? “I don’t have information about it. I am still finding out about that issue,” Brig Byekwaso said.
Second, this is not something new.
On July 3, 1997, The Crusader newspaper broke a story revealing how Gen. Kainerugaba had recruited 100 fresh graduates from Makerere University to join the army.
The Muhoozi Project recruits were trained at Kasenyi on the shores of Lake Victoria, at Kaweweta in Nakasongola as well as Kabamba before completing their cadet course at the Ghaddafi School of Infantry. These shaped the nucleus of the Presidential Guard Brigade, which is today’s Special Forces Command.
To name a few of these Muhoozi Project recruits: there’s Maj. Gen. Sabiiti Mugyenyi Mzee who is the Managing Director of Luwero Industries Limited, an ordnance factory. Then there’s Maj Gen. Don Nabasa who is commander of the Military Police.
The Chief of Logistics and Engineering Brig. Charles Bakahumura, who is a closet dissident and might be arrested soon is also in the frame. Then there’s Brig. Johnston Namanya, who is the Commissioner Passport Control.
Also, there’s Brig. Charity Bainababo, who Kainerugaba once tweeted as “My actual little sister, Colonel Charity, looking very smart in uniform. Our Banyakore things are a bit difficult for most people to follow.” She represents the UPDF in the parliament of Uganda.
Let’s not forget Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Katsigazi Tumusiime, who serves as the Deputy Inspector General of Police of Uganda and, of course, there are several others.
Already, most of Gen. Kainerugaba’s Project Persons are poised to take command in order to implement the final twist in this contorted, convoluted plot. They owe their positions to the current regime and since they are not battle-tested, they will not come with the “we fought” sense of entitlement.
While the older, senior soldiers who feel entitled and would definitely give “Baby Doc” a hard time, are now being shunted to the margins of a history about to turn even more bloody.
