Following our story questioning the whereabouts of Ms Justine Kasule Lumumba, the NRM Secretary General has spoken out saying she has neither resigned nor left the country for medication.
In a tweet sent out on her official handle, Ms Lumumba wrote: “Hello everyone I’m fine and well. I’m not bedridden anywhere as reported. I’m safe and well just home for my annual leave. Good day everyone.”
Her tweet, however, is in sharp contradiction from what her office’s spokesperson Rogers Mulindwa had said as the reason for her being out of office.
Two days ago, Mr. Mulindwa questioned the sanity of our reporter when he inquired as to whether the voluminous NRM Secretary General had ditched the party for a job with a Catholic charity organization. At the time Mr. Mulindwa said his boss was out of the country on official duty, executing the party chairman Yoweri Museveni’s assignments.
“Whoever says that (resignation of SG) has a mental problem. Even if it is you, I repeat you have a mental problem. The Secretary General is out of the country on official duty. The Party Chairman sent her and Mr Todwong is now the acting Secretary General,” he said then.
Interestingly, on the same day, NRM election commission boss, the acerbic Dr. Tanga Odoi, who is Kasule Lumumba’s known nemesis at the party headquarters, had earlier told our reporter amidst laughter that: “She told us she is in London for treatment. For now we know she is getting treatment and that’s the little I know. I don’t know if she is doing other things.”
However, amid all the contradicting stories emerging, impeccable sources had intimidated to Eagle Online that Ms Lumumba tendered in her resignation to the party chairperson after ‘increasingly growing frustrated with intrigue at the Plot 10 Kyadondo, the party headquarters, and the lack of funding and support from the top party leadership’.
The source said the party leadership is handling the matter as a ‘top secret’ as they believe it came at a bad time when they are trying to justify the amendment of Article 102 (b) that engenders the 75-year age limit cap enshrined in the 1995 Constitution.
Letting the resignation news out, observers say, would therefore be a double jeopardy for the party as it may easily be interpreted that officials are split over the possibility of President Museveni ruling beyond 2021, in what opposition politicians have since dubbed the ‘life presidency project’.
On Twitter her Lumumba’s followers welcomed the update wishing her a good recovery.
“As long as you are safe and the leave is not forced leave. @AmamaMbabazi went on leave and remained in leave. You are our pillar in Busoga. Get back to office our sister, we need u working,” one Mboode Willy wrote in response to the SG’s tweet.
