Former UBC anchor and reporter Joseph Basoga, a man who holds a full tribe for a name, is a miserable man. Basoga set out with a massive dream of being the Ugandan version of CNN’s Richard Quest, hoping he would be the thing on the lips of every yawning Ugandan, but after a decade in the media, he has realised that some dreams can only be achieved in a castle.
This reality hit Basoga so hard when he stomped Wairaka in Jinja for Easter holidays. He expected his jalopy registration number to be known to whoever cared to glance and his name shouted, but nothing happened. A beat up Basoga hit Photoshop with a kind of miserably picture that can light the mood of undertakers at the rundown Mulago Hospital mortuary. He grafted the misery on a billboard of a picture that supposedly shows a white couple mesmerised by whatever was on it.
The Early Bird said: “I thought this guy was the spokesperson of Uganda Christian University, no? Is UCU so miserable that their PRO should be grafting himself like that? He should be charged with terrorism of a minor considering how he has forced his innocent child on such a joke of a dream.”
Meanwhile, Basoga’s neighbours claim he has already framed the grafted image on his living room wall, regaling villagers from Iduudi that the image is as real as the smile of a coffin maker during disas
Cancer: Drive to fundraise for former NTV’s Rosemary Nakabirwa on
Cancer: Drive to fundraise for former NTV’s Rosemary Nakabirwa on
KAMPALA – Workers at Serena based NTV have started a campaign that is aimed at raising funds for their former workmate Rosemary Nakabirwa who is battling for her life with skin cancer.
Using their social media platforms, Faridah Nakazibwe and Josephine Karungi have utilised their publicity to ask for mobile money that will Nakabirwa get better medication.
A bank account in Diamond Trust Bank has been also provided to whoever may offer any amount for the patient.
Skin cancer is a common, usually low-grade cancerous (malignant) growth of the skin. It starts from cells that begin as normal skin cells and transform into those with the potential to reproduce in an out-of-control manner.
KAMPALA: The Police’s Criminal Investigations Department (CIID) is investigating the manner in which Shs70 million was suspiciously wired from a Ministry of Defence (MoD) account to the East African Civil Aviation Academy (EACAA), but the funds are said to have vanished in thin air and officials have falsified documents for accountability.
The CIID boss, Grace Akullo, told Eagle Online last week, that her office had received the complaint towards the end of 2013 and a team of investigating officers were assigned to look into the matter.
“I received that case a while back, and its conclusion has been long overdue” due to some hiccups, largely pending audits of aviation school by the Auditor General.
She added, “Our officers also had to go to Soroti but am yet to get a briefing about what they found out.”
The complaint to CIID was filed by a whistle blower who indicated that on February, 02, 2013 the funds were transferred to the EACAA account in Stanbic bank by the MoD.
The money was to pay various expenses, namely allowances for course instructors on air traffic control, induction courses for the UPDF Air Force.
However on 22nd of the same month, a total of Shs19 million and Shs18 million respectively was withdrawn using cheques, and a one Captain Patrick Nduru, a financial controller for the said training and representative of UPDF Airforce based in Soroti was allegedly given Shs30 million, according to documents seen by this newspaper.
The documents indicate that another Shs15 million and Shs16 million respectively were withdrawn and used by the acting Director of the Soroti based flying school Ronald Lodiong.
“The documents and or vouchers used seen, however indicate that they were paying instructors from Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) who trained UPDF Air traffic controller trainees on allegedly non-existent courses at EACAA and on a course that didn’t take place,” the whistle blower document reads in part.
Documents however add that CAA maintains air traffic control assistants at the academy and meets all its expenses at the school. The document seen by Eagle Online also indicate that the said training never took place and all the vouchers for the expenses were “falsified” by Mr Lodiong, Capt Nduru and the accountant David Atenyi.
Each of the eight chief flying instructors for a period of 10 days, according to documents, was to receive Shs11o,000 for a period of 10 days which totals up to Shs8.8 million, but “utterly no training did” take place prior and even after the funds were wired.
“The axis of fraud at EACAA has grown up to vertically and extensively to the highest impunity that should be investigated,” the whistle blower report reads.
Mr Lodiong, told Eagle Online on Saturday that that he had been interrogated by police investigators but the allegations against him are false. CAA officials were not readily available for comment.
BLAMED IT ALL ON MBABAZI: Senior Presidential Advisor on Media and Communications Tamale Mirundi
Tamale Mirundi
Every week, our resident chef moves around carrying a frying pan with steaming cooking oil and words in it. The pan becomes pun as he sets out to interview personalities on topical issues.
It is not every day that you hear Jesca Ababiku speak. The fiction all over the wall is that the Adjumani Woman MP talks only at home, but here we were in Parliament canteen when she observed that President Museveni was on a launching spree in the countryside. Gerald Karuhanga, the Western youth MP, said the head of state was on a morphing mission from Sabalwanyi to Visionary to Chief Viewer and now ‘Commissioner’ of the Republic of Uganda?
“Commissioner? I like that word. Museveni is virtually commissioning everything. He will soon commission a new suit he has imported,” Ssemujju Nganda, the man from Kyadondo East, said.
“But who can he delegate?” Ababiku offered meekly, prompting Ssemujju to joke that ‘non-stately’ functions such as commissioning school laboratories, Gishu circumcision rituals, pit-latrines and receiving NRM hardliners ‘crossing’ to NRM be delegated to Frank Tumwebaze or Tamale Mirundi.
That caught my attention. Mirundi is the man I have been trying to meet recently to discuss some issues on Buganda. Karuhanga suggested I could waylay him at UBC after one of those morning shows or camp around some of the mango-tree radio stations that host the chatterbox.
Two days later, I meet the presidential spokesperson leaving Metro FM where he had just been, for lack of a better word, spewing a lot of verbal garbage about irrelevant issues that dominated decibels in Kampala.
The last time we met, we talked about the rift in State House over Sarah Kagingo where I deliberately took the latter’s side just to make more saliva dribble out of his mouth in a war of words. True to himself, the presidential verbal missile went: “Aha! Frying Pun, I hope it’s not another Kagingo thing you’re going to start me on again, eh?”
I told him that my people in Busoga were launching an outgrowers’ Sacco and we needed him to push so that the Big Man is chief guest.
“The Office of the President is for running the State, not your duck and sugarcane meetings,” Mirundi said as he adjusted his oversized striped coat. “I wonder how you became an MP. I need to visit your constituency firsthand and see firsthand what kind of electionrate you have there.”
“My friend, let’s get the Busoga thing going,” I said. “It will give you that chance to meet my electorate or ‘electionrate’ as you call them.”
“This Tamale Mirundi before you is not stupid. I can’t fall for cheap talk,” he said.
“But let the intelligent Mirundi at least tell the president to consider delegating some of those responsibilities to VP Ssekandi…” his baritone laughter cut me short.
He said: “Ssekandi? We let that man go to some athletics function in London, you saw his suit? The sandal and kaveera? And you still want him to misrepresent the person of the president?”
“Mirundi, Ssekandi is the vice-president who draws salary for that office…”
He interjected like a student of Andrew Mwenda. “It’s better to pay him for doing nothing than pay him for causing more damage to our reputation, especially at this juncture when the President’s presence near his voters helps the re-election cause.”
“So you mean mzee is canvassing? I see we have moved from quarter pin to Kyakuwa through sacks of money and now we’re commissioning everything from Imbalu to saucepans. Meanwhile, UNRA and KCCA keep coming up with impressive artistic impressions of infrastructure that we never see,” I said.
“Frying Pun, don’t insult our party and the party chairman,” he said. “You talk of useless art impressions? The arts you see are the foundation of the changing city.”
“No, don’t misunderstand me, my friend,” I said. “It’s just that we are concerned people are saying our leader is being reduced to a mere commissioner. People like you and the presidential advisors should do something. As for artistic impressions, only those architects take home huge envelopes. In 1996, government gave us one on Wankulukuku as a satellite city, but you and I both know how that place is a swamp to this day.”
“Presidential advisors?” he sneered. “Some of those guys don’t even know their titles. The President does his own things. Give the archi… archi.. ash… assistest-whatever. Give them time.”
“Mirundi, those artistic impressions are like a constipated man buying toilet papers. Then there is the Cabinet Recycle with geezers like Kajura and Mateke as the faces of “government of children”. By the way, I understand even your own job description was embalmed years ago, so you jump from radio to radio to keep relevant, but the President speaks for himself… he doesn’t even follow speeches written for him, which is why we hear about wolves, swine, bean weevils and poisonous mushrooms. Those things are not written in his speeches.”
“But Frying Pun, the President is not stupid. Do you think he’s in P2B to just read after a teacher?” Mirundi fired. “Let me go.”
KAMPALA: Russian authorities in Kampala have defended the awarding of the US $4 billion refinery deal to RT Global Resources a consortium, led by Russia’s Rostec, saying Uganda has a right to “cooperate with all partners who are ready to come here and invest.”
The Russian ambassador to Uganda, Sergey Shishkin told Turkish news Anadolu Agency, on Monday that: “Ugandans are wise people; if this deal benefits them, all the best.”
He was reacting to a recent threat by the US. Envoy to Uganda, Scott DeLisi, who said whilst government had given the refinery deal to RT, it was not yet a done deal.
Amb. DeLisi warned that: “It is not my job to tell the government of Uganda with whom they can engage but it is my job to share with the government the US policy, its concerns if there any and to define the nature of our partnership. So that is what we focus on, but I wish them well even in other dealings but we will see how that all plays out.”
RT, is a subsidiary of the Russian state conglomerate-Rostec-with a weighty foot print in arms dealing and whose chief executive Sergei Chemezov, is under heavy US and EU sanctions.
The government in 2013 started the search process for a lead investor to undertake construction of the 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery and about 75 companies expressed interest by picking the Request for Qualification document. Only eight made it to the last submission round but four companies pulled out citing various reasons.
The four that reached the last round included, RT Global Resources, Japan’s Maruben Corporation, China’s Petroleum Pipeline Bureau (CPPB), and the South Korean SK Group. The Chinese company reportedly was kicked out, according to insiders, for links to the former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, and the race remained between the South Korean and RT.
Mr Chemezov, Rostec’s chief executive, is a former officer in the Russian spy agency-KGB- and close ally of President Vladimir Putin. He has US sanctions on him—freezing assets and barring US companies from dealing with him — since 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation and military adventures in Ukraine.
The Russian envoy, added that, Russia would never advise Uganda on which partner they should work with. “We will never say, ‘Do not cooperate with these people’ – it’s not Russia’s style,” he was quoted.
Can Uganda stay clear of the US-Russia customary sabre rattling?
Discussions between RT and government on the Shs12 trillion venture are still ongoing but officials at the Ministry of Energy, the Permanent Secretary, Kabagambe Kalisa, said earlier that the deal between RT and Uganda is not yet final and that if it became problematic-at most worsened by the sanctions-they could go back to the drawing table to renegotiate with South Koreas SK.
President Museveni has in the recent past scolded Western countries for what he called arrogance, and said China and Russia were available as alternatives because they do not meddle in internal politics of other countries.
In 2011 President Museveni directed the fishing of $744 million out of the government coffers to buy for him eight fighter jets and other military hardware from Russia, kick starting a now years running romance.
Emmanuel Mutaizibwa and Richard Wanambwa in this documentary are finalists in the 2015 Most prestigious One Media World Award. This film aired on Aljazeera in December 2014: Find more details here
