Police have identified 25-year-old US-based Ugandan Emanuel Kidega Samson, as the gunman who shot a woman dead and injured six other churchgoers after he opened fire Sunday morning at a Tennessee church as services were ending.

The shooting at Burnett’s Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tennessee, started in the church’s parking lot, according to police and the Nashville Fire Department. Nashville Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said emergency calls came in around 11:15 a.m. as services were letting out.

Police said Kidega, wearing a neoprene half-mask and driving an SUV, arrived in the parking lot and first fatally fired at 39-year-old Melanie Smith, who was walking to her car.

After gunning down the woman in the parking lot, Kidega Samson went inside through the rear of the church and began “indiscriminately shooting at people,” police said, wounding six people.

A church usher, identified as 22-year-old Robert Engle, ran up and confronted Samson and was subsequently pistol-whipped by him, police said. Samson was at some point shot in the left pectoral, though police still don’t know if the gun discharged on its own during Engle’s struggle with the suspect.

At that point, Engle went to his car, where he got his weapon to confront the shooter again.

It was not possible to establish when Kidega Samsom, most probably from the Acholi tribe of Northern Uganda arrived in the US, but Police said he had attended the church within the past two years. He has been released from a local hospital and will be charged with one count of murder, with additional charges to come.

The Memphis FBI Field Office’s Nashville Resident Agency, the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee have opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting, the US Attorney’s Office said Sunday.

All seven of the wounded were taken to area hospitals. Five of them were sent to Vanderbilt Medical Center and one to Skyline Medical Center.

Vanderbilt Medical Center said in a statement after the shooting that its emergency medicine physicians and trauma center surgeons are caring for two critically injured gunshot victims, and another four individuals who are currently in stable condition.

Nashville Christian School released a statement on Sunday, saying, “As you may already know, one of our Bible teachers, Joey Spann, and his wife were both injured in the church shooting this morning at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch. We do not have any additional information at this time but want to boldly ask you to pray. Please lift up Coach Joey Spann and his wife Peggy and all who have been injured or impacted by this tragic event.”

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry released a statement on Sunday: “This is a terrible tragedy for our city,” she said. “My heart aches for the family and friends of the deceased as well as for the wounded victims and their loved ones. Their lives have been forever changed, as has the life of their faith community at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ.

“My administration, especially the Metro Nashville Police Department, will continue to work with community members to stop crime before it starts, encourage peaceful conflict resolution, and promote non-violence,” she added.

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Nine additional Doctorate candidates from six African countries have been selected to participate in the three-year in-region and in-country scholarship programme aimed at strengthening the capacity for agricultural teaching and research in African universities.

The programme, run by the Makerere University-based Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture ( RUFORUM), in partnership with the German Academic Exchange Services, (DAAD), kicks off this September. This year’s awardees represent the sixth group of beneficiaries and will bring the total number of doctoral trainees to 29. They are drawn from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Rwanda.

Focusing on four disciplines – food science and human nutrition, agricultural and rural innovation, life sciences, and plant breeding and biotechnology, the programme aims at improving the capacity of universities to train skilled problem-solvers and generate relevant outputs, according to Sylvia Mkandawire, the programme manager for training and quality assurance at RUFORUM.

Many studies, Ms. Mkandawire said, have identified gaps and limited capacities in these disciplines to effectively managing research, training and outreach programmes in Africa.

It is expected to build a critical mass of agricultural scientists to support the generation of knowledge and innovations for development in Africa,” she said.

Mkandawire said the programme emphasises in-region mobility of students, enabling them to take courses not available at their home institutions, while at the same time providing for some in-country scholarships, in order to maintain a balance.

The programme is being implemented within the RUFORUM member universities. In 2013, member universities signed a memorandum of understanding with RUFORUM to jointly escalate postgraduate training in Africa. In terms of this memorandum, member universities agreed to waive education-related costs to allow training of staff at another member university in a cost-shared manner. This arrangement significantly reduces the cost of training within Africa.

Students recruited through in-region and in-country programmes are expected to complete the PhD programme within three years. Upon completion of the coursework and approval of their research proposal, they are allowed to conduct research either in their home countries or host university institutions.

Attempts are made to link the students’ research to the specific research needs of their country of origin. The arrangement gives the students opportunities to conduct research that addresses the needs of their home countries and to integrate the research recommendation effectively for the betterment of the communities they serve.

In addition to academic supervisors at host institutions, the students are also mentored by experts from the home country so as to keep them up to date with current trends in research back home and to ensure that the research remains relevant to the home institution. According to Mkandawire, this increases the chances of students settling down in their home institution upon completion to work on an issue of national importance.

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The Amudat District Chief Finance Officer, Mr. John Luchugi Bosco, has been arrested on the orders of the Local Government Accounts Committee of Parliament for allegedly mismanaging and illegally spending billions of monies meant for works in the district.

Luchugi, who appeared before the Committee sitting in Mbarara District headquarters on September 21, 2017, was accused of taking over the entire powers of all the portfolios of the district and illegally spending the money.

He was faulted for signing, paying and sanctioning of the said money.

“This officer has taken over everything in the district. He is the Engineer, Procurement Officer and the Chairperson, and everybody here can see how he takes over answering all the queries even when his team, headed by the Chief Administrative Officer, is seated here”. Reagan Okumu said.

Okumu highlighted that most the queries were criminal in nature and for that that matter, he ordered the finance officer to make a statement on the state of affairs about the management of funds in Amudat district.

“I am asking CIID to interact with him for further investigation so that the information they will get will help the committee to have a clear image about issues of Amudat, and also give recommendations,” Okumu said.

Daniel Muheirwe expressed dissatisfaction with Mr. Luchugi and asked the Amudat Chief Administrative Officer to crack the whip and take charge of her officers.

“Amudat gets more funds and grants compared to other districts but when we asked him, as the finance officer, how much he collects in local revenue, he arrogantly said, ‘zero’. This clearly showed us that the level of abuse of funds in Amudat was extreme,” he said.

Angel Mark Dulu informed the officials that the committee had many queries with local government officials from Amudat district including the fact that they even failed to attend over three committee sittings when they were summoned to Soroti last year.

“If we take real scrutiny of all these queries, Amudat would not pass the test and we would have referred the whole team to police”. Joseph Ssekabiito said.

Mr. Edward Ssembatya expressed gratitude over the decision taken by the committee to arrest Mr. Luchugi saying that serious sanction must be taken against corrupt civil servants and that it is the only way to help government fight corruption.

“We have been penalizing people for stealing Shs2 million but this finance officer has mismanaged millions and millions of funds. This must end, and this must end today,” he said.

The committee plans to conduct a special visit to Amudat to assess the impact of abuse of funds, fraud and mismanagement of the district monies by local government officers.

The Committee has completed its meetings with all district accounting officers and is going to finalise its work after meeting the Minister and Permanent Secretary of Local Government, National Medical Stores and President Museveni. The committee will then write a report, which will be tabled on the Floor of Parliament.

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The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has launched a paper pilot processing plant at the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI).

While speaking at the launch on Friday, September 22 2017, the Speaker said that she was impressed with the work and innovations the Institute had come up with over time.

“My last visit here was five years ago and I must say I’m impressed. Parliament will celebrate this by inviting you to come and talk about your work,” she said, adding that “When I looked at the banana stems, I imagined how much money we can get from making paper from all the stems in the country. It is remarkable to see the use of various organic raw materials to process paper which we as a country have in plenty.”

Kadaga said it is because of the need to spur innovations in the country that parliament made a resolution to have the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

“When I was in China, I noticed that every industry I visited had a research department. We need to inject more money and time in research in order to transform from a market-based to a producer-based nation,” she noted.

The Speaker promised to arrange an exhibition at parliament to showcase to the general population what the researchers at UIRI are doing.

“Let us support these products, let us market more of our products because they are good,” Kadaga said.

The Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Elioda Tumwesigye, was grateful to parliament for ensuring that a sectorial committee responsible for science and technology was created because it will enable such important institutions.

“We appreciate staff of UIRI for all the work done under meagre resources. There is a lot of technology transfer and research and development. We thank them for their achievements,” Tumwesigye said.

He also noted that government is committed to injecting more money into UIRI, adding that “We got Shs30billion of which Shs10 billion will come to the Institute.”

“The President has asked us to work on existing innovations and convert them into commercial successes. The private sector can take on some of these technology innovations and build on them,” Tumwesigye said.

He said that government is impressed with how UIRI is contributing to the production of products from the banana value chain.

Prof. Charles Kwesiga, the Executive Director, Uganda Industrial Research Institute, said “The Institute has piloted a number of projects and this is just one of them. We have projects in confectionary, machinery, agriculture, among others.”

He expressed his gratitude towards the government for the support it has rendered to UIRI’s projects and work.

The processing plant, which is a pilot project, uses waste paper and banana fibres from banana stems to make paper and various paper products using a handmade paper-processing machine.

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“The people of Fort Portal made it clear to me not to tamper with the Constitution by amending Article 102 (b). I will respect the people’s will,” the municipality legislator Alex Ruhunda, has said.

Ruhunda, a National Resistance Movement (NRM) MP was weighing in on the ongoing raging debate over whether to remove or maintain the 75-year age cap for the presidency, and becomes one of the first in the ruling party to openly state his position on the now thorny issue.

According to Ruhunda, the acrimonious arguments threaten to derail the gains registered by the NRM government, including among others the projected middle income status by 2020.

“I pray that we stop the overzealous of making a fundamental mistake that will create a huge political and security problem for our Country yet we were set to move out of poverty!” MP Ruhunda wrote, and appealed to President Yoweri Museveni to resist temptations by protagonists of the impending bill aimed at amending Article 102 (b).

“I have been reflecting on the future of my beloved Country Uganda the pearl of Africa especially after an emotionally heated atmosphere in Parliament on Thursday! I hope God will touch the heart of President Yoweri Museveni to avoid the temptation of listening to short term opportunistic individuals that are pushing for the removal of Age limit in our Constitution. This is the chance for NRM to plan for succession if the legacy of our beloved President Museveni is to remain like that of Mwalimu Nyerere. These were my words in the NRM caucus,” he added.

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