Sobi: Man who lived by sword, dies by the sword

Whether he actually turned into one, or was simply working with a few individuals in the agencies remains unclear.  What is clear is that this is a man who confessed to having terrorised the city for several years.
With a gang believed to have been between 30 and 50 men strong, he carried out crimes ranging from petty theft to robbery and murder in the central business district and city suburbs.

Sobi, who dropped out of school in Primary Four, was born in the family of Moses Ndugwa in Masaka, but spent most of his life in Kitintale in Nakawa Division.
He reportedly took up the name Sobi after watching the April 1987 movie, “Escape from Sobibor”, which told of the mass escape of Jewish prisoners from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor.

Why he took up the name remains a mystery, but he soon shortened it to “Sobi”, which became his trademark. It also meant that no one that he was interested in would escape him.
The man, who attempted to return to school by enrolling at Lake Side Luzira in the 1990s, soon started training as a street boxer from Meat Parkers and Kampala Boxing Clubs before taking up body building in Nakivubo between 1992 and 1993.

He in time set up a training and recruitment base in Kitintale trading centre. It was also here that he planned most of his operations.
While appearing on one of the local stations, he confessed to have been arrested on so many occasions, but that the most memorable one was when he was arrested from Burton Street while he was loading a taxi.

He was marched to the Central Police Station, from where he was arraigned before the Buganda Road Court and subsequently remanded to Luzira prison.
Sobi inadvertently made a case for the installation of surveillance cameras, saying their “successes” were due to lack of the same. 
He, however, also always pointed to the thinness of the security forces, saying the ratio of personnel to the populace was so low.

Confession
“We took advantage of the fact that the government by that time was focusing on rebel groups that were trying to infiltrate the country. There was less attention being paid to domestic criminal activities,” he said while appearing on a local television station.

Whereas he was known to have participated in several robberies, it was always difficult for security to arrest and successfully prosecute him.
At some point in 2017, Sobi claimed to have become a born-again Christian.
He subsequently claimed that he was working with the police to give Kampala a crime free festive season, but it soon emerged that they had, using their “cooperation” with security, continued committing crimes. The group was subsequently arrested by the Kampala Metropolitan Area Police, who opened a case file. The file contained allegations of murders, rape and armed robberies in Kampala. Sobi and some of the suspects were detained in Nsangi for further questioning.

“Sobi and his group must tell security the people they killed, police officer they claim to be working with them in the alleged gruesome activities,” said Mr Frank Mwesigwa, who was the Commander of the Kampala Metropolitan police.

Sobi, it appeared, was finally cornered, only for “orders from above” to direct that he be handed over to the Internal Security Organisation (ISO) as their suspect.
“There is nothing peculiar about the police handing over the suspects to ISO, since the security agencies work together,” Gen Kayihura said back then.

After that, Sobi hid away, outran the long arm of the law, but he just could not resist participating in the kind of violence by which he had lived for most of his adult life.
The violence of the kind he unleashed on others took his own life on Monday in a similar fashion and equal measure like his victims.