Geraldine Ssali Busuulwa speaks during the NSSF annual members meeting at Kampala Serena Hotel in October 2015. PHOTO/FILE
Ms Geraldine Ssali, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, requires limited or no introduction among Uganda’s civil, political and corporate elite.
She has been a high-flying corporate leader, having worked as the deputy managing director of NSSF, and now a ministry accounting officer.
In both places, and even in younger life, Ms Ssali has been a person of passion whose exploits either ended in success or controversy.
That has made her notable; a partner in battles with line ministers and a subordinate, a subject of parliamentary inquiry, a bureaucrat stirring divisive public discourse, and now a candidate for prosecution.
She began stringing her story along these lines from childhood. While appearing on Capital FM’s Desert Island Discs show with Simon Kasyate in June 2015, Ms Ssali revealed that though she had been involved in some mischief during her lower secondary education days at Gayaza High School, she never got caught.
“The teachers and prefects never got an opportunity to catch me because I always knew when to jump out,” Ms Ssali said during that interview.
However, if her arrest yesterday, reportedly on President Museveni’s orders, is anything to go by, Ms Ssali likely never made the timely judgment call to jump.
Born in 1975 to Mr Gerald Ssali and Ms Agnes Ssali, the Trade ministry PS attended Buganda Road Primary School in Kampala, took secondary education at Gayaza High School in Wakiso District before enrolling at Makerere University where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree.
Afterwards, she flew out to the United Kingdom where she pursued a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at the University of Manchester. This propelled her to become a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA).
Joining NSSF
Ms Ssali’s first recognisable employment was at the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), where she served as the deputy Managing Director.
Ms Ssali took over as the Deputy MD of the Fund on March 20, 2010 after the then Minister of Finance, Ms Syda Bbumba, signed her appointment letter.
After a short honeymoon on the job, trouble erupted, marking the start of a series of fights between her and senior management colleagues, including then Managing Director Richard Byarugaba, and later the Board.
The real reasons behind this fight remain unknown so many years after Ms Ssali left acrimoniously.
She was accused of stepping on many toes at NSSF by, among others, trying to stop underhand deals including those that had been mooted under the Lubowa Housing project. Those claims could not be independently verified.
Most of those fights were confined to the board rooms and the corridors at Workers’ House, the headquarters of the Fund on Pilkington Road in Kampala’s Central Business District.
The tensions, however, came to the fore at some point in 2014 when Mr Byarugaba, appearing before a parliamentary committee that was probing the Fund’s decision to invest in the shares of power distributor, Umeme, named Ms Ssali in a clique fighting him at work.
It was, therefore, no surprise when the NSSF Board suspended Ms Ssali on March 9, 2016, accusing her of insubordination, misconduct and undermining MD Byarugaba.
Those fights had strayed into the courtroom, with Ms Ssali in June 2016 awarded Shs200 million by the High Court.
Moving to Trade
In August 2021, President Museveni named Ms Ssali, who had been out in the cold, as the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives.
However, within less than two years on the job, Ms Ssali found herself at the crosshairs of another bitter and bigger battle. This time, it was about money – big cash. Her accusers said she had mismanaged billions of shillings that the government forked out to compensate and revive farmers’ cooperative societies scarred by past wars in the country.
A report of a parliamentary select committee on Trade and Tourism named her husband, Mr Victor Busuulwa, as having allegedly received a kick-back from Bwavu Mpologoma on behalf of the PS.
She denied any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, the committee’s report called for disciplinary action against her.
The PS became a subject of adverse public discourse and, appearing before MPs, her fate seemed sealed in a claim whose flames she said were stoked by some of her line ministers.
The fall-out was over a tenancy deal, reportedly negotiated before Ms Ssali took charge as PS and accounting officer, under which the Trade ministry was to relocate from Farmers’ House on Parliamentary Avenue, where it was paying token rent, to Kingdom Kampala to sink Shs10 billion annually in rent.
The PS stopped the deal, choosing instead to renovate the old offices at Shs3b. In putting her feet down on the tenancy, Ms Ssali found out she had pressed a self-destruct button where a syndicated fightback led to her exposure on many fronts, among, alleged abuse of office, mismanagement of funds, and corruption.
She denied the allegations, but an abrasive line of questioning rendered her vulnerable. The damage was spotlighted by a decision by the Ministry of Finance Permanent Secretary, Mr Ramathan Ggoobi, to remove her as the Trade Ministry accounting officer.
Days later, in October 2023, President Museveni reinstated her as Accounting Officer, a kick in the teeth for her fighters, which underlined her power was higher than imagined.
The opprobrium petered out, and Ms Ssali gained a bounce in her feet, making some to christen her as an untouchable. Reports that she had a direct line to the President’s brother Caleb Akandwanaho, alias Salim Saleh, arguably Uganda’s second most powerful citizen, made many of her scared detractors fizzle in thin air.
It also meant the terse recommendations of the lawmakers had slammed into an impenetrable wall. Or, so, many thought.
Going physical
A new twist to Ms Ssali’s fate surfaced in April this year when the police opened investigations into allegations that she had slapped and subsequently interdicted a legal officer in the ministry she supervised.
The alleged victim, Ms Sandra Karen Anena, filed a formal report at the Central Police Station.
The PS counter-accused Ms Anena of “gross unbecoming behaviour such as using abusive language against me, assaulting, threatening me, and throwing items at me and insubordination which is irregular for a public officer of your calibre”.
That case too went nowhere, adding to the layer of her mystery and invincibility. However, her arrest yesterday, and planned arraignment in court this afternoon, may suggest orbiting around the sun of Uganda’s political power has melted the wax in her wings, enabling gravity to pull her body to the ground with a thud.
