The leadership wars at UIA that never end 

Maggie, as she is popularly known, left UIA after serving out her contract in June 2011. 

She had served for 12 years, during which she inspired many stories and redefined government’s approach to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) at a time when Uganda was in dire need of solid capital to drive private sector growth and industrialisation.  

The demands of the time required a personality of Maggie’s quality, whose irresistible charm would sway or tilt investment decisions in favour of Uganda. 

The economy at the time needed a new direction to cut back on imports and grow the country’s production capacity. 

Thus, by 2010, any lingering doubts about her abilities had been swept aside and replaced by admiration for an icon who had transformed Uganda’s investment landscape.

Therefore, her leaving UIA - though known for months - was a sad reality, but consoled by an optimistic future that would just build on to what she had structured out.   

In the 10 years to 2010, a year into the final bend of her contract, UIA had influenced massive growth in Uganda’s FDI and resultant jobs, which had grown almost four-fold from an annual average of $200m (Shs739b) in 2000 to $845m (Shs3.1 trillion), while created jobs stood at an average of 55,000 by 2007.

The figures, compared to now, of course, read like a minor triumph but were worth celebrating. 

Maggie had become the face of Uganda’s agenda to attract FDI and an influencer of investment decisions within and beyond the country. 

Her successes notwithstanding - the failure to fashion out the Kampala Industrial and Business Park in Namanve - as had been planned - stood out and continues to haunt UIA in a journey where there have been many successes, but threatened by a checkered history, characterised by leadership fights. 

In the final months of her contract, it was clear that there was a silent struggle from within UIA on who would replace her. 

Before long, the maneuvers would play out in public, before turning into a full-blown-out confrontation. 

In June 2011, Tom Buringuriza, the then deputy was appointed UIA executive director in acting capacity. 

However, after almost a year in the position, he was in July indefinitely replaced by Lawrence Byensi in a vicious power struggle in which Buringuriza had petitioned the Inspector General of Government (IGG)alleging irregularities in a process that sought to appoint a substantive executive director. 

In a petitioned filed through his lawyers, Karuhanga, Tabaro, and Advocates, Buringuriza had sought the intervention of the IGG in what he deemed “unfairness and bias in the recruitment exercise” for the executive director, citing a malicious note by Maggie Kigozi, in which she allegedly wrote that “his treatment of subordinate staff is aggressive, dominating and even physical at times”. 

“We petition your good office to intervene in this matter and carry out investigations at the earliest opportunity with the view of preventing the injustice being meted on our client,” the June 27, 2012 petition, which also accused some board members of bias petitioned the IGG. 

However, before the verdict could be delivered, the UIA board sent Buringuriza on forced leave “to avoid paralysis of the institution as investigations are being carried out by the IGG following his complaint”.  “This was decided in the best interest of the institution,” a board resolution that also appointed Byensi, noted. 

But the appointment of Byensi would reveal the underbelly of the extent of the power struggle when he vowed that he would not vacate office even if Buringuriza returned from his leave. 

“He will effectively assume the post of acting deputy executive director. I will not leave the office for him under any circumstances,” he said then, amid a probe into the affairs of UIA by the Parliamentary Committee on Commissions Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises.

The IGG found no merit in Buringuriza’s petition and the manoeuvers on who would substantively replace Maggie Kigozi were cut short in October 2012 with the appointment of Frank Sebbowa in a process that had been repeated with the then UIA chairman Patrick Bitature saying: “We were not happy with the first exercise. But very soon, we shall have that problem sorted out.”

It had, thus, taken UIA a year and three months to recruit an executive director. 

A 2013 Parliamentary report reviewing the performance of UIA indicated that Dama Consultants been hired to recruit an executive director and had issued a report in September 2011, in which David Ogong had scored the highest mark of 70.5 percent but the board had refused to appoint him because the score was below the required 75 percent, in addition to explaining “that an ideal chief executive officer should be a person who can work well with His Excellency the President.”

It was unclear why the board then would assume that Ogong would not work well with the President.  

Therefore, by subsequently appointing Sebbowa, who was the former executive director of the Electricity Regulatory Authority, the power struggle had been cut short, and indeed calm returned at the investment agency that had endured more than a year of open confrontation, complete with some dramatic episodes.   

His reign was largely quiet, save for the occasional triumphs in which land for more industrial parks was secured in Bweyogerere, Luzira, Namanve, Kasese, Soroti, Jinja, Mbarara, Mbale and Moroto. 

But only Luzira and Bweyogerere were fitted with water, electricity, roads, and warehouses, while Namanve, which has been a pain point on UIA, Mbarara and Soroti remained at various stages of development. 

Other challenges that largely centered on the failure to fix required utilities in the Kampala Business Industrial Park and allocation of land that remained undeveloped for long periods went on until he left in October 2016. 

However, Sebbowa’s departure ushered in one of the most chaotic periods that will, for long, define UIA.   

On April 1, 2017, the Emely Kugonza-led board appointed Jolly Kaguhangire as the new UIA executive director. 

She had been billed as an accomplished strategic leader with 23 years of experience in managing corporate business plans and reforms at Uganda Revenue Authority, which UIA needed “at this critical time when we are beginning to implement the strategic plan 2016-21”. 

The plan sought to, among others, create at least one million jobs by 2021 by reorganising staff.  

What started as a calm journey into rebuilding UIA would soon explode in a struggle that pitted staff, at first, before sucking in the board, against  Kaguhangire.  

Cracks had opened beginning with a reorganisation, in which some staff claimed victimisation and intimidation.  The tension would persist  before escalating into open defiance by Kaguhangire against the board, which claimed it had not approved the reorganisation plan. 

The battle lines had been drawn and it was evident that staff had picked sides and from the look of things, many of them, were silently cheering on the board against their boss, whom they had accused of various crimes.   

Eventually, Kugonza indicted Kaguhangire after a series of dramatic episodes on accusations of abuse of office, gross insubordination, incompetence, concealment of misinformation, lying to the board, defiance and misconduct. 

However, in defiance, Kaguhangire refused to leave office, with the board choosing to force her out by allegedly changing locks to the doors of her office. 

Her contract was, in November 2018, subsequently terminated after more than a year based on findings of an investigation, which resolved that her conduct amounted to gross misconduct in line with the UIA Human Resource policy.

The IGG, however, cleared Kaguhangire, but had already been replaced by Basil Ajer, who, in acting capacity, also left just four months into the appointment in April 2019 “to explore new opportunities”. 

“I leave behind a united staff and stable environment where everyone feels recognised for their service,” he said but added that he had led “ largely demotivated staff who had no job security.”

Ajer had led UIA at a time when it was being restructured to create a more efficient investment agency.

Byensi, who had put in a retirement notice in 2019, returned once again to fill the void in acting capacity until July 2021, in which he oversaw the restructuring of UIA and handed over to Robert Mukiza in a redefined role of director general, before proceeding into retirement. 

Mukiza, who had been a deputy director and representative of the African Union Commission the Global and Green Growth Institute (GGGI) in Ethiopia, was appointed after scoring 84 percent in interviews where he emerged winner. 

His time at UIA had largely been less volatile until August last year when Uganda Registration Services Bureau openly confronted the investment agency for irregularly taking over office ownership rights of the Uganda Business Facilitation Centre in Kololo.   

In a staff email then, URSB Registrar General Mercy Kainebwisho faulted UIA for forcefully taking over the facility and rebranding it as its own, yet the terms of an earlier memorandum of understanding indicated URSB as the World Bank-funded project owner.  

“… we were taken aback to discover our … home branded with [UIA] insignia. The branding was done in bad faith,” she wrote, but the fight was quickly muted with UIA pulling down its insignia. 

Whereas the URSB - UIA fight could have been a conflict over nothing, more was soon to come in a confrontation in which Investment Minister Evelyn Anite just recently accused Mukiza and some of his staff of illegally rewarding themselves against an incomplete project.

The confrontation - originating from the payment of Shs542m to some UIA staff as honoraria, which Anite terms “illegal” - has been so intense, sucking in the President - to probe - and the IGG on one side. 

In a July 3 letter, Anite requested the IGG to investigate the matter “due to the uncertainty of the misappropriation’s impact on the total loan sum and the project” financed by a loan from the UK Export Finance to develop infrastructure at the problematic Kampala Industrial and Business Park.

Of course, there could be more than what meets the eye. The structure of some of the letters in which Anite accuses Mukiza of “betrayal and unprecedented lies” tell of a silent struggle that was only waiting for an opportune moment to bust out in the open. 

“I was taken aback when in an attempt to deflate from the misuse of funds, you accused me of being driven by personal motives … hearing your allegations before the Fountain of Honour, I was deeply disappointed and in disbelief by your betrayal and unprecedented lies … despite my disappointment, H.E the President advised me to forgive you,” she wrote in a July 3 letter.     

Asked where this leaves UIA, which has been dusting itself of previous scandals, Mr Mukiza did not reply Monitor’s text message. 

UIA chairman Morrison Rwakakamba declined to comment on the matter saying: “Contact or engage the people who have been talking about it”.  

On her part, Anite told Monitor last week, that selecting a few people to get honoraria is disorganising staff at UIA, who are adopting to a reorganised investment agency, and insisted that the money has to be paid back “and we move on”. 

“My next course of action has already been taken and that is writing to the IGG, which I have done formerly [and] they have started the work of investigating,” she said. 

Ms Munira Ali, the IGG spokesperson, yesterday confirmed they had received the complaint and commenced investigations, but noted the probe about honoraria was a “big scope investigation”.

origin of the current fight 

On June 14, Monitor broke a story in which Anite had directed UIA top management to return Shs545m they paid to themselves as “honoraria payment” off the loan funding the development of Kampala Industrial Park Development (KIPD) project.

In a June 12 letter to UIA board chairperson Morrison Rwakakamba, Anite described the payment as “despicable, uncouth, barbaric, and uncultured “that UIA top management can dip their hands into funds for a project that has stalled for five years against its initial completion date of January 5, 2024.

“All these tantamount to mischarge, abuse, and corruption at the expense of the taxpayers of Uganda,” she wrote, directing that top management led by Mukiza “refunds all the money” within 24 hours from receipt of the letter” back to the project account” and “failure to do so within the stipulated time frame will attract dire consequences.”

Mukiza, speaking through an intermediary, told Monitor that: “The honorarium is perfectly legal because it was already spelt out in the contract.”

“Maybe the minister is being misled or she has not read the contract in detail,” he said. 

Mukiza and eight other staff, according to the letter, paid themselves Shs280m on July 23, 2023 for undertaking “additional responsibilities” to bridge the gap in the supervision of the infrastructure development of the project in August 2022.

Mukiza received Shs82m; his deputy, Dr Paul Kyalimpa, Shs58m Patience Kabije, the contracts and claims manager, Shs43m, John Bwambale Kyamakya, the transactional and contractual risk manager, Shs43m, Amina Nassaka, the contracts and claims assistant, Shs17m, Suzanne Akware Okissa, the records manager, Shs17m, Joanitah Kambedha, a documentarist, Shs8m, Mwanga Muzamil and Mr Augustine Katale, both drivers, Shs4m each.

Other staff received the money in the second tranche in euros included, the KIPD project manager, Mr Alex Nuwagira, Shs92m, Mr Felix Tumukunde Beinamaryo, the project engineer, Shs55m, Mr Emmanuel Muhumuza, the project architect, Shs49m, Mr William Sande, the project quantitative surveyor, Shs36m, and Mr Dominic Mugesera, the project accountant, Shs30m. These form part of the KIPD project management team.

[email protected]