UGANDA: Tanga Odoi crosses the redline into Museveni's 'refugees top secret'

TANGA ODOI CROSSES THE REDLINE INTO MUSEVENI'S 'REFUGEES TOP SECRET'

".......cross-border communities sharing common heritage and cultures. A significant proportion of these populations sometimes end up being classified as either refugees or internally displaced persons. Government will develop a framework to ..........maximize the positive impacts of cross-border population movement."

Uganda National Land Policy of 2013, Chapter 7.5 at page 51.

Uganda is host to an estimated 1.4M refugees originating from the neighboring countries. In almost all these countries, Museveni has had a hand in fomenting the conflicts that led to the refugee exodus. In return, he has used their presence in Uganda as a bait for attracting western aid and a cover-up for his military dictatorship. He adopted a liberal refugee policy that has not only attracted poverty stricken neighbouring citizens to flock into Uganda under the guise of seeking asylum, but even the self relocation of refugees already granted asylum in some of the neighboring countries into Uganda. It's a situation of economic immigrants disguising as refugees. For Museveni, they are neither refugees nor economic immigrants but victims of "cross-border population movements".

As envisaged in the above cited extract of the National Land Policy, Museveni has been "maximizing the positive impacts of cross-border population movements". During the 2016 general elections, the opposition politicians raised a red flag that the regime was deliberately issuing national ID cards to Rwandese to vote for Museveni but the regime vehemently denied this. A few months later, in April 2016 while on a tour of the Uganda-Rwanda border post of Mirama Hill, the then Minister of Internal Affairs. Rose Akol directed that Rwandese holding both Ugandan and Rwandese IDs should surrender one. She went ahead to disclose that during the previous three months, her ministry had been collecting Ugandan ID cards from Rwandese at a rate of ten per day.

Caught off guard by revelation of such a tightly guarded secret, the Museveni regime simply kept mum waiting for the right time to punish Rose Akol. It was only the Rwandese Ambassador to Uganda who said that "......on Rwanda's side, there was no violation of any law because our constitution allows dual citizenship". A few days later, Rose Akol was sacked from the position of Minister and dropped from cabinet. Earlier, Museveni had for sinister motives planted into the 3rd Schedule of the 1995 Constitution, Rwandese as among the 56 indigenous Ugandan communities. Further, in June 2013 he pushed for and signed a tripartite arrangement under the Coalition of the Willing for citizens of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya citizens to move freely using their national IDs, student IDs and Voters Cards. It came into force in January 2014 and since then it's the Rwandese who have benefitted by massively flocking into Uganda. It's only the ongoing bad blood between Museveni and Kagame over the former's support for the latter's dissidents that there is a crackdown on Rwandese immigrants in Uganda.

If you think Rose Akol's revelations were from the donkey's mouth, then you can now get it from the horse's mouth;

"They have been posing as citizens and some were put on the register through some politicians. I can’t imagine, they have forged our party cards and have been taking part in the elections. This is abusing the hospitality they have been accorded. I am leading this investigation and we will not reveal their names now. When we are done, we will share the findings with Uganda Police."

Museveni regime party (NRM) Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Tanga Odoi.

He told the media in Kampala this week that with the assistance of local politicians, some refugees had their names registered on the NRM national party register. He singled out South Sudanese and Congolese and of course he feared to directly mention the controversial Banyarwanda/Banyamulenge. As if to contradict himself, he pointed out that the practice is prevalent in the cattle corridor which is the hot bed of the Banyarwanda a.k.a Balalo.

Dr. Tanga Odoi belongs to the group of disgruntled regime cadres like Richard Tadwong, Ofwono Opondo and others. They excitedly jumped into the regime bandwagon thinking that it was a political party but have come to realise that it is a gang of Mafias.

Around March 2018, while speaking to Makerere University graduate students during a humanities and social sciences symposium at the University Main hall, Dr Odoi said it was wrong for the NRM party government to rely on security analysts such as the inspector general of police, and the head of Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence as its intellectuals to direct the affairs of the country because they are too incompetent to run a country.

“We need policy thinkers for budgets, like [UPC’s Dr Apollo Milton] Obote had five-year-development plans; we all know whose results you could see. We lack critical thinkers to criticise and direct government that is why all parties are dying due to petty differences,” he said.

Dr Odoi said whenever he tries to criticise some NRM government policies, he has been booed by petty-thinking politicians who treat history selectively and have denied Ugandans the opportunity to appreciate late President Obote’s heroic acts. He concluded by bragging that "If I am terminated here, I still have a job because I am a critical thinker, a teacher of history and a historian."

However, this time round, he has crossed the redline and won't survive. In Museveni's Uganda, you don't poke your nose into the Banyarwanda affairs and simply get away with it. Does Dr. Tanga Odoi know why INDANGAMUNTU (a kinyarwanda word) was adopted as the local name for Uganda's national ID? Just watch the space.

INFORMATION IS POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF UGANDA IS MUSEVENISM

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