Uganda: State House and Security Agencies Under Siege
How a crook weaved his way into the confidence of President Yoweri Museveni and is now wrecking havoc in the security institutions of state
THE INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION TEAM |
He calls himself a brigadier general in the UPDF. He introduces himself to people as a Senior Presidential Adviser on Intelligence and Security. He claims to have been trained by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and to have served in Israel’s army for two years. He boasts that he worked for Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, for ten years. He says he did a master’s degree in security at the University of London’s Kings College. He drives a car with state house number plates or sometimes covers the number plates. He always has a pickup truck filled with SFC soldiers as his bodyguards. And he lives inside Nakasero State Lodge. So, when he tells tall tales and issues threats, everyone feels cowed.
Stephen Nuwagaba is not a popularly known person in Uganda. But among government officials, most especially those in the security services, his name strikes terror, his threats are taken seriously and his appearance in one’s office makes people quake. He claims to have good access to the president, and he has pictures of himself with the president, some with the First Lady and others with the first daughter, Natasha Museveni Karugire. He is said to enjoy the trust of the chief of state. As a result, he says he can make and unmake the careers of many public officials.
That is what has made him seemingly powerful but also very rich: extortion. He blackmails vulnerable public officials by threatening to report their indiscretions to the president. And pay him not to report them. Those that refuse his blackmail find themselves in trouble as Nuwagaba writes reports about them to the president, and they get fired or jailed or both. He moves in a latest luxury Land Cruiser V8. He has a Ford Raptor and a Tundra. And he is escorted by many SFC bodyguards.
On January 3, this year, he called the Director of Operations at Uganda Police, AIGP Frank Mwesigwa and asked for an appointment. He was given one, went to police headquarters in Naguru and met Mwesigwa. He said he had information that Mwesigwa was getting money from the government of Rwanda and had bought land which was in court. He said he was making a report for the president and that things were not good for Mwesigwa. The director told him that if the Rwandan money comes on his bank account, they can check that. And if it comes as cash, they should know the courier.
Then Nuwagaba said that if Mwesigwa gave him Shs 300m, he would change the report to the president and say the allegations are false and save Mwesigwa. The AIGP ordered him out of his office and he left. After that, Nuwagaba began sending messages to Mwesigwa saying that his days at police are numbered. Nuwagaba and Mwesigwa come from the same sub-county of Kinoni in Kiruhura District and they share acquaintances.
It did not take long when a lady called Cynthia Kalanzi was arrested by the State House anti-corruption unit and thrown in jail. She had sold a piece of land in Akayanja village in Kononi to Mwesigwa. The State House anti-corruption unit alleged that Cynthia had illegally evicted her siblings from the land. She was in jail for ten days without charges. The matter itself was already in civil court. All the evidence, including the testimony of Cynthia’s mother, showed that the complaints had no serious case. Thus, the criminal charges were an attempt to intimidate Cynthia to take her land and to threaten Mwesigwa to know how not to refuse extortion from a well-connected thug. It was also an attempt to intimidate the AIGP and show him his (Nuwagaba’s) power within the system.
Fake accounts
State House sources say that Nuwagaba has ruined the careers of many people inside the Uganda security establishment. These included Museveni’s former ADC, Lt Col Naboth Katezi; one Susan Kasingye; and another, Lt Col Betty Agaba, both working at State House. He created fake chats about them. How? He would get two phones and download WhatsApp on them. Then he would get their profile pictures and then use them to chat with himself. He would take these chats to the president as evidence that the two people were communicating. Based on these forgeries, he would write reports to the president claiming he had “evidence” of subversive communication between these officials.
Few in intelligence were safe from his cobra bite: the chief of defense intelligence and security, Maj Gen Richard Otto, the Director General of ISO, Maj. Arthur Mugyenyi, and the commander of the Fourth Division in Pader, Maj. Gen. Keith Katungihave all been smeared by Nuwagaba. “He has written reports about them to the president alleging that they are enemies within the system,” a source said.
Last August, the minister for security, Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi, sent Nuwagaba to ISO. Nuwagaba, who seems to have been recommended to Muhwezi by President Yoweri Museveni, had claimed that he has high skills and expertise to hack into people’s phones and listen to voice calls on social media apps like WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. He also claimed to have spent years working with the IDF and Mossad and that he was still in contact with them. ISO agreed to meet Nuwagaba and assess his claims. After listening to him, the ISO technical team judged that he was a fraudster and a liar.
Nonetheless, in respect to the minister, they gave him an assignment. They advanced him $1,000 plus phone numbers, which he was asked to hack into and bring conversations back to ISO. Unknown to him, all the numbers belonged to the very ISO staff he was talking to in the meeting. So whatever he would forge would have been exposed. Nuwagaba took the money and never showed up at ISO again.
ISO works and collaborates with Israel’s Mossad. So Kampala contacted its counterparts in Tel Aviv and asked about Nuwagaba, even sending them his past and present passports, photos of him and everything else they had. Mossad checked all Israeli databases and could not find any record of Nuwagaba ever entering the country, let alone joining the IDF or working with Mossad. ISO reported back to Muhwezi, and the matter was closed.
Kakwenza connections
It turns out that Nuwagaba had actually been duping some high-ranking government official on another matter. He claimed to be in contact with Kakwenza Rukirabasaija, a self-exiled fugitive in Germany. He said Kakwenza was poor, suffering in Germany, and wanted to return to Uganda. He would ask for money to send to Kakwenza as upkeep to keep him on the government side. However, at the same time Kakwenza was also writing stories about the goings-on inside State House. Security became suspicious that Nuwagaba was the main source of these leaks since he lives in State House and has access to the inside information.
According to security sources, Nuwagaba was leaking this information to Kakwenza in order to increase the attractiveness of the fugitive being returned to Uganda. And since Nuwagaba was the contact between the state and Kakwenza, he would then ask for money to support the self-exiled fugitive and either share it with him or eat it alone. Security reported this to the president.
Nuwagaba first popped in 2023. He claimed he had a girlfriend who was, at the same time, a girlfriend to the head of FUFA, Hashim Magogo, also husband to former Speaker Anita Annet Among. He claimed that Magogo and Among had used one Amis Ainebyona and another Charles Twine to torture him. He was taken to the headquarters of Defence Intelligence by activist Nicolas Opiyo to meet the chief, Maj. Gen. James Birungi and his deputy, Col. Abdul Rugumayo. He was interviewed by Agatha Atuhaire and Haggai Matsiko on Twitter Spaces, where he gave details of his ordeal.
Later, Nuwagaba claimed to have an audio of Charles Twine flirting with a girl. He shared this audio with Agatha Atuhaire and also with Kakwenza. He then tried to use it to blackmail Twine and extort money from him. He then tried to extort money from Anita Among. He told Agatha Atuhaire that he studied internet hacking in Turkey and Malaysia. Many of his stories were not adding up and seemed far-fetched. So Atuhaire and Nicolas Opiyo began to avoid him.
Another time, Brig. Gen. Moses Rwakitarate took Nuwagaba to meet Gen Salim Saleh. After listening to him, Saleh advised that Nuwagaba be taken to a mental hospital for a checkup. He felt his claims and assertions were of a mentally disturbed person. Later, Saleh told people, he heard Nuwagaba had found his way into the good books of the president.
The manipulation of intelligence to dupe the president is neither new nor unexpected. For instance, there is a guy called Amon. He lied to Museveni that he had information about a plot to kill the Kenyan president, William Ruto. The president felt there was credibility in the information and called Ruto. He asked him to give audience to Amon and listen to him. Amon went to Nairobi and told Ruto that ADF and Al Shabab want to kill him. Ruto gave this information to his security officials for investigation. They found it was unfounded and wrote a report to Ruto saying so. Ruto got the report and sent it to Museveni by special envoy.
When Amon learnt that the Kenyan security services had debunked his story as fake, he found his way back to Ruto. How? No one knows. This time he told Ruto that Museveni was the one planning to kill the Kenyan president. Ruto listened carefully to Amon and passed on Amon’s report to Museveni. When Amon returned to Uganda, he was immediately arrested, charged with treason and is now languishing in Luzira as his trial proceeds. According to sources close to the State House, Amon’s lies were more believable. But for Nuwagaba, the lies need only an hour to disprove.
Sources at the State House and in intelligence claim that information peddlers have infiltrated State House and are feeding the president with raw and fake information. This has often succeeded in large part because the president’s approach to intelligence is based on popular vigilance. But this approach to intelligence worked well when NRM was in the bush and the circle of actors was small. Now Uganda has grown big in state and population and money.
Those old methods of informality cannot manage such complexity. They have their advantages. But they create big risks. Yet, insiders say, the president wants to keep using his informal channels. The result is that today, people like Nuwagaba are turning security institutions on each other. They are causing internal discord, making it dangerous for the integrity of the state.
