Speaker Anita Among
At 9.36pm on February 24, a Makerere University professor and popular satirist, Dr Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, alias Spire, posted a poll question on his micro-blogging site X, formerly twitter.
He asked: “Should Uganda Parliament and MPs be exhibited?
By 11.00am the following day, the #UgandaParliamentExhibition kicked off, and within only 14 hours, the poll question had attracted 12,570 votes, with 95 percent voting to have the exhibition.
True to the excitement, the exhibition was to trigger a series of intense scrutiny of the House as well as criticisms over alleged maladministration and extravagant spending by the 11th Parliament.
Dr Spire and Ms Agather Atuhaire, a journalist cum lawyer and social activist, and team leader at Agora Discourse, an online activism forum, led the exhibition.
Three months later, the exposes have proved to be only a scrapping of the tip of the iceberg that have now left the House’s top leader in a flood of allegations of corruption, nepotism, favoritism, funds mismanagement, and extravagance in the conduct of her public and personal affairs.
These accusations have not been proven.
That notwithstanding, in the wake of these intense scrutiny, the US Department of State on May 30, slapped travel sanctions against Ms Among.
Matthew Miller, the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, in a statement, said: “Speaker of Parliament Anita Among is designated due to involvement in significant corruption tied to her leadership of Uganda’s Parliament. “The statement also indicted five current and former Ugandan officials for their involvement in significant corruption or gross violations of human rights.”
The other government officials indicted included former Minister of Karamoja, Ms Mary Goretti Kitutu, her deputy Ms Agnes Nandutu, and the current Planning State Amos Lugolobi over their involvement in the iron sheets scandal.
Also accused was the former Deputy Chief of the Ugandan Peoples’ Defence Forces, Peter Elwelu.
Ms Among’s sanctions came only weeks after the United Kingdom also slapped similar travel sanctions and even froze all her assets in the UK over similar reasons.
Welcoming the sanctions, Ms Atuhaire one of the leaders of the exhibition posted on her X-platform: “I thank the US government for not only standing with us when we are being persecuted for doing what everyone should do, but for also showing the corrupt, the abusers of our rights, that there’s a price they will pay, however small, for these actions,”
Combo (L-R): Speaker Anita Among, her husband Moses Magogo, former Deputy Chief of Defence Forces Lt Gen Peter Elwelu, former minister of state for Karamoja affairs Agness Nandutu, and Minister of State for Finance Amos Lugoloobi. Inset (R) is the former minister of Karamoja affairs. PHOTOS/ FILE
Similarly, Dr Spire posted: “We often say that the West is individualistic and we are communitarian, yet those who steal from sick people, from the poorest of the poor, walk around being heavily guarded and chasing everyone else off roads for them to pass…..,”
The Parliament Exhibition had unearthed multiple issues with the biggest ones being the service award and the alleged Shs3b which was allegedly allocated to Ms Among for travels in six months.
Service award
The May 6, 2022 Parliamentary Commission meeting chaired by Ms Among reportedly okayed Shs1.7b service award to tMr Mathias Mpuuga, the former Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, and three ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) backbench commissioners.
Following the award, the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, where Mr Mpuuga belongs, ordered him to return the “dirty money,” apologise to the country, and resign his new position as commissioner, which Mr Mpuuga rejected outright.
Currently, a section of MPs led by the Lwemiyaga County legislator are collecting signatures to enable them move a motion to impeach the four commissioners over the award, which they claim was irregularly done.
Travels
Ms Atuhaire on February 29 posted documents, which showed Ms Among who is also the Bukedea Woman MP, reportedly allocated Shs3b for 10 trips outside the country between July 2023 and January 2024, which she reportedly didn’t travel.
The document indicated that she travelled to Kenya four times, South Africa and Rwanda, while the remaining three in Europe; Italy and Turkey and
Russia
Although the Parliamentary Director in-charge of Communication and Public Affairs, Mr Chris Obore acknowledged that Ms Among made some of these travels to Russia and South Sudan, the rest of the trips, he said, were mere forgeries by people who want the Speaker to look bad before the public. An analysis of the Hansards by this newspaper in March indicated that the Speaker was in the country and chaired the House during the days Mr Obore claimed she had travelled as was cited for the trip to Russia.
Donations
The online exhibitors also posted documents that indicated that Ms Among was using bank accounts of her junior staff’ to withdraw huge sums of of money for donations and other activities. Mr Obore admitted on March 6 during the X-space discussion on Agora Discourse that the funds were being passed through the accounts for donations and other corporate social responsibility activities of Parliament.
Recruitments and other anomalies
Another accusation was that Parliament was paying more than Shs1.6b to 19 ghost workers that had been unearthed by the Auditor General in his 2023 report. But Mr Obore later shared with this newspaper a new report that had been revised by the Auditor General, stating that the ghost workers were only 2 not 19 as had earlier been stated.
Tight-lipped
Amid these online exposure, Parliament leadership have never made any formal response although the communication team has been responding to some of the allegations in the public spaces.
However, Ms Among, three weeks after the exhibition, made her first pronunciation, where she blamed the entire exhibition on imperialists and activists pushing for homosexual rights after chaired the House that overwhelmingly passed the Anti-Homosexual Act, 2023.
“Honourable members, I will never, and I’m saying, I will never give you an answer on hearsay, on rumour mongering. And we’re not going to run this House on rumour mongering...Me to answer you on hearsay? On things you have cooked on social media because I have said no to ‘bum-shafting’? I will not, next item,” she said.
A month later, Ms Among again suffocated the debate on Parliament Exhibition when she blocked Mr Ssekikubo from bringing up the debate in Parliament.
“By the time I leave my house very early in the morning, I have come for serious business…..I have very important issues that are statutory in nature to be handled so if you don’t respect the Chair,....unless we have more than one Speaker in this House much as I try to be patient, don’t touch the wrong side…..,” she said as she warned him not to test her anger.
When she was sanctioned by the UK, the Speaker again said the sanctions were politically motivated because of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023.
By press time, neither Ms Among nor her handlers had responded to the new sanctions.
