Exclusive!! How Makerere University Rejected President Museveni, Sneaked Into Dar El Salaam Helped By Obote

If dead men could confirm their stories! Here is one man who was once Uganda’s representative to the Middle East, Member and Acting Chairman of the Central Scholarship Committee in the Ministry of Education, Member of the National Association of the Advancement of Muslims (NAAM) in the 1960s; Deputy Chief Kadhi of Uganda to Sheik Obeid Kamulegeya in the early 1980s; and Member of the Presidential Policy Commission of UPC in the early Millennium.

This man is the Late Annas Kinyiri.One day, while acting as Chairman of the Central Scholarship Committee, he received a note from President Apollo Milton Obote. The note was brought by a student eager to join Makerere University. In those days, admission to Makerere required submitting 10 copies of graduated tax tickets.

In the note, the President asked the Committee to create a pathway for Yoweri Museveni to join Makerere without producing graduated tax tickets, stating that Museveni, a UPC youth winger, qualified but couldn’t meet the requirement. Graduated tax tickets were used to prove citizenship and locality.Annas Kinyiri convened the committee, which overwhelmingly rejected the request, citing the need to strictly observe regulations. Kinyiri conveyed this decision to the President in a sealed letter.

The President responded with another plea, leading the committee to compromise, allowing the student to produce 5 graduated tax tickets.Realizing he couldn’t circumvent the regulation, the President sought another solution. He wrote to Tanzania’s President, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, asking him to influence the University of Dar-es-Salaam to admit five young men, including Museveni, for various degree courses. Thanks to Nyerere’s intervention, they were admitted.

In 1987, Annas Kinyiri and other Basoga elders were summoned to a meeting arranged by Kirunda Kivejinja to introduce the new president, Yoweri Museveni, to influential Basoga elders. According to Annas Kinyiri, the president arrived with a gun on his shoulders. Kinyiri openly expressed his disgust that a son of a Mukopi was president and added, “When a country is ruled by bakopi then that country has no future”.

According to Kinyiri, even Mwangu expressed the same sentiments.When President Museveni told Kinyiri that he was appointing him to be Uganda’s representative again in the middle East, he declined. When the meeting was dissolved, the president, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, ordered the immediate arrest of Kinyiri and Mwangu. They were whisked off to Gaddafi army barracks.

Later they were moved to Luzira, where Kagata Namiti and Paul Muwanga were also incarcerated.When President Museveni offered to appoint Kinyiri as Uganda’s representative to the Middle East, he declined. Subsequently, Kinyiri and others were arrested and detained without trial until 1989. He later learned of his release due to the intervention of the International Committee of the Red Cross.However, he was rearrested and accused of being a member of Force Obote Back (FOBA). He remained in Kirinya Prison until 1999 when he was released with the President’s sanction.

Despite his bitterness towards Obote, Kinyiri eventually reconciled with him after Obote apologized for the ordeal. In 2000, Obote appointed Kinyiri to the Presidential Policy Commission of the UPC.Kinyiri passed away about 6 or 7 years ago, leaving behind a legacy of principles, ethics, and forgiveness. He believed in sharing knowledge and information, emphasizing their importance in understanding oneself and one’s country. The elderly are depositories of knowledge and information.

I learnt that early in my life. I would never let old people hoard knowledge that would enhance my own in case they passed it to me. So Kinyiri was one of the valuable resources that i would never let go without benefiting from then in terms of knowledge.He knew a lot about the Middle East. He had been involved in seeing that our children get educated. He was a politician. He had been a religious leader. He had been a teacher too. And he was a successful family man. Besides, he was an honest man who loved the truth. May His Soul Rest In Peace.

I have also become of age. I am sure those who have associated with me, and have been curious an inquisitive enough, have gaine a lot of knowledge from me. I appeal to all the elderly of Uganda to pass on knowledge and information that can help us know ourselves and country better. Knowledge is power. Where there is no knowledge people will suffer from ignorance is the worst disease of humanity. It has no bounds.May His Soul Rest In Peace.

The Writer Is a Ugandan Scientist And Environmentalist