On Sunday last week the Lamwo Resident District Commissioner (RDC) James Nabinson Kidega got an unexpected call from president Museveni.
‘‘A team of people, 400 of them, are coming to your district,’’ the president reportedly told Mr Kidega, according to an audio of Mr Kidega circulating online.
‘‘Speaker and the Horyal went to him [President] about the plantation of sugar here [Lamwo],’’ Mr Kidega, in halting English explains, while referring to the Speaker of Parliament [Rebecca Kadaga] and Horyal Investment Holdings.
In the audio, the RDC appeared to have been addressing a group of an unidentified people, suspected to be Lamwo district officials, to inform them of the president’s directive that 400 labourers were about to be transported from Kamuli in Busoga to Lamwo in Acholi despite the country being on a Covid-19 lockdown, under the president’s orders.
‘‘Have you got me,’’ an excited Kidega quotes the president as asking him to which he [Kidega] replied: ‘‘Yes sir’’.
Kidega is a man who cut his teeth in the shadowy world of security operatives floating on the margins of the formal and informal; legal and illegal before he was appointed Gulu RDC on the basis of his fierce loyalty and clandestine work for the NRM. He was re-appointed RDC of Lamwo after loosing out in the 2016 parliamentary elections in Aruu North to to Lucy Aciro. A half-baked graduate of Gulu University, Kidega was the best placed to enthusiastically execute a presidential order.
‘‘There was no time to say oh, oh, what, this one,’’ he dramatically explains in the audio to drive home his point that a presidential directive is not something to be questioned. In the background, his audience can be heard breaking out in laughter. The content of the audio has been authenticated by the RDC in interviews with journalists.
A sleek sugar baron
Horyal Investment Holdings is owned by Amina Hirse Moghe, a Kenyan businessman of Somali decent. The company owns a majority stake (68%) in Atiak Sugar located in Atiak sub county in Amuru district, with government of Uganda through Uganda Development Corporation (UDC) owning a 44% stake.
Amina, a woman with friends and contacts in high places remained largely unknown to many villagers in Acholi until she showed interest in acquiring a chunk of privately-owned land in Pacilo in Attiak to set up a sugar factory and sugarcane plantations.
In Kampala, Nairobi and beyond, she is known as a shrewd businesswoman with interest in a range of businesses including but not limited to real estate, hospitality, supermarkets, and sugar production. In August 2017, she made it on Forbes Africa’s list of dollar multi-millionaires in Uganda.
Major works on Atiak Sugar are nearly complete. Roads have been opened within the factory and leading to the factory; a bridge has been built across River Unyama to aid movement from Lamwo to Attiak and South Sudan, a market Amina has her eyes on. Pylons fly over villages ferrying electricity to the factory. By last year, the projection was that the factory would begin operations in the first quarter of 2020.
Cozying Acholi elite
As she went on building her sugar factory with billions worth of support from the government (which gradually upped its stake to the present 44%), Armina went on a charm offensive, warming up with the Acholi political and economic elite to get the much-needed buy-in that the Madhavni’s had disastrously failed to get in Lakang, also in Amuru.
Unlike in the Madhavani case which was characterized by display of raw state power, bullying and bribery, Armina invested in building and winning a degree of support and mutual trust among Acholi power brokers.
But her guards might have come down in the act of attempting to use ‘‘high end power’’ to ferry 400 labourers from Kamuli to Lamwo to plant her cane.
Until the news of the ferrying of the labourers broke, not many knew Armina had acquired, reportedly with the support of local stakeholders, about 15,000 hectares of land in Ayuu-Alali parish in Palabek Kal for sugarcane growing.
Of the 15,000 hectares, 7,000 has already been cleared by Horyal in preparation for the planting season in April. The rest of the land, Acholi Times understands, will be used by outgrowers. The Covid-19 lockdown, however, threw the cane planting plan in the air. Using her immense connections in power centres, Armina sought to cut some corners. She contacted the Speaker Rebecca Kadaga who took her to the president to authorize the movement of 400 labourers to support the cane planting in Palabek Alali.
The cane in Alali is expected to feed the factory in Attiak which at production peak is projected to chew up to 1,650 tones of cane per day, producing 66,000 tons of sugar annually, according to information from the Horyal.
Uproar & Damage Control
The news of the Kamuli- Lamwo movement was met with immediate stiff resistance on and offline, forcing the Board Chair of Atiak Sugar, Dan Kidega, former Speaker of the East African Community to issue a statement on WhatsApp: ‘‘Lukaka, the issue of bringing plantation workers from Busoga to Lamwo has been stopped. All other related concerns shall be addressed accordingly’’.
Ebola was in 2000 imported by withdrawing UPDF soldiers from an adventurous and looting mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Moving people from one corner of the country to another at a time of another pandemic evoked comparisons with the Ebola outbreak. It also showed a degree of double-standards and hypocrisy on the part of the president who has since the outbreak of Covid-19 in Uganda emphasized the ‘‘Stay Home’’ message to minimize the spread of the virus.
The lesson learnt from the Madhavani fiasco and the now stopped movement of labourers from Kamuli to Lamwo is that Acholi—its people, leadership, elite and its increasingly alert online activists need to keep an eye on goings-on, discern what it means, whose interest the goings-on represent and what it means for Acholi while keeping an eye on the strategic ball.
‘‘We may not control the direction of the winds, but we can set our sails to tap the winds at an angle that can enable our vessel to a destination of our choosing,’’ is how DP President Norbert Mao who has described himself as a ‘‘vision bearer, strong supporter and key promoter’’ of the Atiak sugar project, put it.