Gen Levi Karuhanga (RIP), then First Division commander, pips Lt Col Ndahura Atwooki (centre) with Lieutenant Colonel rank upon taking over as commander of the 301 Brigade in 2003.
Right is Lt Col Charles Anywar, the outgoing commander. PHOTO | ANDREW BAGALA
Col Ndahura Atwooki, then Lieutenant Colonel, received information that he had been seconded by the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) to the Uganda Police Force (UPF) as the director of Crime Intelligence Directorate (CI) in September 2015 with excitement.
Col Ndahura had got an opportunity to serve the CI, formerly Special Branch, which he had deserted nearly 31 years ago while he was a police constable before joining the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels. After the NRA rebels took over power in 1986, he switched to a military career.
“As the second senior military officer in the police, I was to establish the CI. With my background in the Special Branch, I didn’t expect any challenges given the fact that the CI had similar roles,” Col Ndahura tells Sunday Monitor.
President Museveni directed the establishment of the CI after he saw gaps in intelligence collection. This was years after the Special Branch was scrapped. To fit in the police structure well, the President also appointed Col Ndahura as an Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIGP), the third highest rank in the Uganda Police Force (UPF).
Work started smoothly, Col Ndahura recalls. He created structures, got the best police intelligence officers and finances for the CI. The police began yielding fruits in the field. However, the smooth journey didn’t last for long. Col Ndahura soon found out that the environment was toxic.
“There were many misgivings in the police. There were many suspicions among the police officers about soldiers in the UPF. There were some other external factors, which were overwhelming and distracting. I wasn’t able to deliver my best,” Col Ndahura discloses.
Kaweesi assassination
The assassination of AIGP Andrew Felix Kaweesi on March 17, 2017, barely helped matters.
“I regret losing my colleague AIGP Kaweesi because I would have saved him. And I even warned him, but I wasn’t able to save him for reasons beyond my making,” Col Ndahura says.
AIGP Kaweesi, his bodyguard, and driver were waylaid by armed men riding on motorcycles and shot dead as they travelled from his home in Nakawa Division in Kampala to his workplace. Col Ndahura had earlier got intelligence that there was an impending attack on one of the police directors. However, they didn’t know the time and the exact persons who were to carry out the attack.
A week before the assassination of AIGP Kaweesi, Col Ndahura intimated to senior police officers during their weekly meeting about the pending attack and even implored them to take security precautions. According to Col Ndahura, the group behind that attack had vowed to attack the police for successfully hunting down its members. The group also contemplated carrying out terror attacks.
After Kaweesi’s assassination, Col Ndahura was tasked to hunt down the killers. Intelligence and investigations identified the suspected shooters, planners and how they moved into the country. Several of the suspects were arrested and some admitted to having taken part in the commission of the crime.
Arrested
Col Ndahura said at the time when the investigations had reached critical stage in 2018, his contract with the police was terminated and he was later arrested by the army on allegations of failing to protect war materiel and illegal extradition of Rwandans. He was, therefore, unable to follow up on the investigations.
His arrest was the beginning of troubles that rocked the last part of his career in both the police and the army. Col Ndahura was detained for months without access to lawyers or his family members. In desperate attempts to know about his whereabouts, Col Ndahura’s family visited several security facilities and high-profile politicians to help them locate him. Each time they were told to wait. They turned to the media, but it didn’t help much.
After months of waiting, Col Ndahura was produced in the General Court Martial, where he and others heard a litany of charges read before they were remanded.
“In prison, I was given a self-contained room. It was solitary. Prison in any form isn’t good. I will be deceiving if I say it was good. It is something of temporary death. You can’t be near your family,” Col Ndahura admits, adding: “Whoever wishes you jail wishes you death. It is a deathbed, whether you are on a mattress or not. The only thing you think of is your family.”
While in his self-contained room, his solitary mind often ran to his family to whom he was the breadwinner. He was lonely. Some of his friends feared to even visit or reach out to him since they didn’t want to be seen as if they were sympathising with him.
His family protested holding him without bail and the refusal of the security personnel to. During that time, his daughter told this newspaper that the entire family was in limbo since the breadwinner was being held without access to lawyers and anyone. Some of his five children (three girls and two boys) were even unable to pay their school fees.
Seeing no future in the country and scared that they would be harmed by, some of his grown up children sought refuge outside Uganda.
“When I got a challenge, my children got scared and they left the country. They now live abroad. One (daughter) has a Masters degree in Law and another is completing her PhD in Molecular Science soon,” Col Ndahura reveals.
Released
After a lot of struggles, Col Ndahura was released on bail by the General Court Martial, but he was confined in Kampala City and Wakiso District. He remained in that state for more than six years. Despite the confinement, he had to look for school fees for his two sons which meant he had to get loans from the army financial institution. The two boys are now at university.
Amid the financial challenges, Dr Besigye and his sister, Dr Olive Kobusingye’s lawyers demanded that he should pay the fine that court awarded to the siblings after he lost a defamation case against them. Col Ndahura had sued the duo over Dr Kobusingye’s book titled The Correct Line?, in which she contends that Col Ndahura, then a Captain, had masterminded the violence during the 2001 General Election in Rukungiri District in which people were killed. Col Ndahura sued Dr Besigye and Dr Kobusingye for defamation, but lost the case. Col Ndahura risked falling into the abyss before President Museveni came to his rescue.
“At the beginning of last year, he (President) sent me some money, a demonstration of his magnanimity. What I understand is that President Museveni is one thing and the State is another,” Col Ndahura says.
President Museveni also assigned his personal lawyer to defend Col Ndahura in the General Court Martial.
“As far as I am concerned, the President’s personal lawyer is still my lawyer,” he says.
A year after the financial rescue, the military prosecutors dropped the charges against Col Ndahura and his colleagues. The General Court Martial set him and his colleagues free in March. Soon after that close shave, Col Ndahura retired from the army.
“I am grateful to the Commander-in-Chief, who granted me retirement as by the list submitted to him, which is a gesture by law that there is no, even a suspicion, possibility of criminal proceedings against me. I am 100 percent free,” he said.
Retirement
According to military law, Col Ndahura says, if there is any sign of possible criminal proceedings, you can’t be retired. Col Ndahura says he still finds trouble healing mentally from the court and prison challenges.
“It takes time to recover,” he says, adding: “The trauma you suffer is untold. When you are in public, you always feel downcast.”
He missed out on parity or promotion for six years while being subject to prosecution. He retired on April 22.
Despite challenges that affected his latter years of service, Col Ndahura is a happy man. He points to retiring honourably and without bodily injuries sustained during several wars.
“My preoccupation is to catch up with the parenting role,” he reveals.
He adds: “My children were born in a chaotic environment. They have largely grown up without us. We haven’t been at home. They don’t know the culture and people yet they (traditional values) are very important to them. When you aren’t there, you may end up living without knowing their culture.”
He proceeds to state thus: “You will end up without knowing how to greet in your mother tongue. They don’t know empako [pet names] and will lose if they stood in an election, because you didn’t teach them key phrases in their mother tongue. From the service, it is an opportunity to return home so that my children can always find me there.”
Although he is now a free man, Col Ndahura insists it still pains him that he was arrested and humiliated despite the sacrifice he put in throughout his most productive years.
