Omar Bongo, Mayuge District’s LC5 chairperson during the interview. photos by DENIS EDEMA
In Summary
Named after the Gabonese Strongman, The Mayuge District chairperson eyes a higher office. We look at his political career so far
The Station Wagon screeches to a halt in front of the Mayuge District administration block.
Extremely conspicuous is the youthful swagger of the man clad in a beige Salwar Kameez (traditional Islamic Men’s suit comprised of a loose fitting tunic with button cuffs and pants) complete with a Kufi, who alights from the vehicle and dashes into the building.
“Who is he?” I ask one of the women with whom we had been standing outside the building.
“Where are you from?” she asks with unmistakable disdain.
The tone tells us that we should have known that the young man is Omar Bongo, the chairperson of Mayuge, a district that has been at war with itself for almost all of its close to 15 years of existence.
Tensions started building up right from the time it was carved out of Iganga District in 2000. The 2001 LCV elections which coincided with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-led International Security Assistance Force’s invasion of Afghanistan and the ouster of Taliban government heightened the tensions and polarised the populace. Rival factions identified themselves along the lines of the warring factions in Afghanistan. Former Mayuge MP, Sarah Namumbya, led the “Taliban” while Mr Baker Ikoba Tigawalana led the “Americans”.
The darkest point of the “Taliban” Vs the “Americans” conflict that stretched from 2001 to 2009 was the murder, in 2003, of Fred Musiitwa Nume, who had gone to Court seeking to eject Tigawalana from office for lack of academic qualifications.
On January 16, 2003 Musiitwa was kidnapped from the Kityerera County Courthouse in Mayuge and driven to Bujuko Forest in Mityana where he was murdered.
Although he had initially been absolved, on December 17, 2009 the Court of Appeal found Tigawalana and three others responsible for the murder. Tigawalana who was not in court has since been in hiding.
Tigawalana’s faction backed Haji Daudi Isanga, husband to State Minister for Gender, Rukia Isanga Nakadama, while the “Talibans” backed Mr Bongo, who views himself as a representative of his generation.
“This is a generational struggle. I was given a flag to carry, but as a representative of the youth. Whatever I do either elevates them or pulls them down. When I serve well they can say to the rest of the country that give us an opportunity to serve you like Bongo has done,” he argues.
But wait a minute! Bongo! Yes. You heard right. The name is not listed in the catalogue of names from Busoga. So where did he get it from?
It was his maternal grandfather, the late Omar Maluki, who named the 35-year-old after the then Gabonese strongman, El Hadj Omar Bongo Odimba.
“He [Omari Maluki] used to admire him a lot and used to read a lot of his [Omar Bongo’s] articles. When I was born, he said that he wanted me to follow in the footsteps of his role model,” explains Bongo.
Who is Bongo?
Alhaji Bongo is the son of the late leader of the Shi’ite Muslim Sect in Uganda, Sheikh Dr Abdul Kadhir Muwaya.
The third in a family of 10 children born by his father’s two wives, Bongo who holds a Masters’ Degree in Public Administration from the Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU) was born at St Francis’ Hospital Buluba on February 2, 1979.
He attended Kongoni Primary School and Upper Hill Secondary School in Nairobi before returning to Uganda in the late 1990s to join Tawheed Islamic Institute in Buyemba where he sat his Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) before joining IUIU for his Bachelor’s Degree.
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