President Museveni was forced to fire Judy Obitre-Gama as the Executive Director of the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) after she failed to account for billions of shillings while also failing to deliver the National ID project, new details show.
Museveni in June this year opted not to renew the contract of Ms Obitre-Gama and directed the Internal Affairs Minister Gen Jejje Odong to find a better replacement for the job.
It has now emerged that the President declined renewing Obitre-Gama’s contract after getting an intelligence report detailing how the NIRA ED had personally benefited from a Shs 8.4bn scandal where Shs 2.1 billion was paid out to individual personal accounts of some officials while another Shs 1.3 b was deposited to an account belonging to an accountant.
That money was never accounted for and that was the final nail in Obitre-Gama’s coffin.
The intelligence dossier also gave details of corruption, nepotism, poor performance and incompetence, allegations of massive irregularities in the issuance and replacement of identity cards, exacerbating Obitre-Gama’s precarious position.
“I have been informed that the contract of the current executive director is due to expire. Given the problems faced by NIRA especially relating to the issuance of national identity cards, there is need to identify a new executive director, preferably with legal or information technology background,” Mr Museveni wrote to Gen Odong.
Gama, 50, is an academic who previously served as a lecturer at Makerere University law school and several boards, including that of Uganda Registration Services Bureau, and Bank of Uganda.
She worked as head of legal and surveillance at Uganda Securities Exchange and as a lawyer for the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA)
