UGANDA: Behind Museveni's militarisation of Immigration services

BEHIND MUSEVENI'S MILITARISATION OF IMMIGRATION SERVICES

Museveni has deployed Brig Gowa Kasita as Director of Immigration and Citizenship, Col Geoffrey Kambare as Commissioner of Immigration and Col Johnson Namanya as Commissioner of Citizenship and Passport.  Like is the case with other government agencies, the militarisation of the immigration services has always been ongoing.  What has only changed is the the speed at which it has been fast tracked culminating in a total takeover by the military.  The major incidents below account for this development.

In April 2016 the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Rose Akol decried the rate at which Rwandese were acquiring Uganda's National IDs.  She innocently issued the following directive;
         "May be Rwandese do not know the implications of having two national identity cards and need to be sensitized by the immigration officers here at the border post so that they can easily surrender one of the cards because it is not proper to have two like what they do. You find a person having Endangamuntu from Rwanda and a Uganda national identity,”.

No wonder, shortly after she was sacked and the practice continued unabetted.  The development confirmed opposition fears during the sham February 2016 elections that Rwandese were deliberately being registered as voters.

Recently in August 2018 NRM's Dr. Tanga Odoi was lamenting over refugees voting for the regime thus;
      “You 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."

In October 2016 a neatly choreographed ploy by the usual regime mafias duped a Polish company, BMP Poland Z.o.o and stole from them huge amounts of money. The company was duped by a one Capt Muhoozi, a Mr Simbwa and others acting for the big regime mafia bosses by passing themselves off as contacts to the Ministry of Defence’s procurement unit and held meetings with the company’s officials inside the Bombo army barracks.  The details were made public by the immigration services.

In December 2017, a group of  young Rwandese men were intercepted by the immigration services at the Uganda Tanzania border.  They were travelling on forged Ugandan temporary travel documents that had been given to them by Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) to enable the group cross into Tanzania, then Burundi, and to eventually reach their final destination in Minebwe, South Kivu, DRC.  The group was suspected to be recruits of the dissident Rwandan RNC.  It was a big embarrassment to the Museveni regime which has always denied links with the dissident group.

In April 2017, the International Organisation for Immigration    (IOM) formally handed over a facility for training immigration officers, to the Government of Uganda. The Immigration Training Academy in the central district of Nakasongola was built by IOM, as part of the USD 1.8 million project, Strengthening Border Security in Uganda, funded by the Government of Japan.  As has been the case with all agencies that attract huge donor funding,  the funding for the immigration project proved so attractive that the regime has to place it under its armpits.  Consequently, in August 2018, the institute passed out of 20 immigration officers after undergoing paramilitary and intelligence training.

Around February 2018, a Finnish national who is said to have owned a security company back home arrived at Entebbe Airport from Finland.  Upon arrival at the airport, he told immigration authorities that he was an investor and was in Uganda to meet the head of the ISO, Col Frank Kaka.  Peterri then handed a letter purportedly signed by a State House official to authorities at the airport after which immigration contacted the ISO boss, Kaka to confirm whether he expected a visitor but he (Kaka) denied having any knowledge of the visitor.

The agents of the usual regime Mafia bosses who were waiting at the airport escorted Paterri to Pearl of Africa Hotel in Kampala from where he was found dead the following day. The deal had gone bad and the details were made public by the immigration officials.

Reception and management of refugees has been another source of foreign exchange for the regime.  Naturally, refugees ought to structurally fall under the immigration services but for obvious reasons the Museveni regime placed it under the Office of the Prime Minister.

The audit report released last month unearthed ghost refugees and alleged that there was corruption, misconduct and sexual abuse in their management.  The release of the preliminary results of the audit last month left the government and the UNHCR struggling to explain a 24 per cent drop in the number of refugees from the earlier indicated 1.44 million, a difference of 350,000 people.  Therefore, don't be surprised if the department is placed under immigration so that the army can effectively conceal the inflated refugee figures the same way it has always done with ghost soldiers.

Museveni's $500,000 bribe from a Chinese construction company termed as "campaign donation" that was delivered in May 2016 followed Mr. Ho first asking Kutesa for help with the customs officials in regards to the bribe that was delivered in gift boxes.  Ho stated in an email also copied Kutesa's wife Edith,
      "As we are about to board the plane to Uganda, we are preparing to bring with us some very 'nice' gifts to your President and to the Ugandan Foreign minister to celebrate the occasion. We shall require special assistance with your customs procedure. Please assist in whatever way you can otherwise we will have to make other plans."

Dr. Besigye recently made it more clearer thus;   
       "There are emails when Mr Ho raised fears of passing at the immigration and Mrs Kutesa said 'don’t worry, we shall get you from the tarmac [airport].' We now have evidence of thieving in State House…There exists a report of Mr Ho to those who sent the money [bribe] saying it was successfully delivered. It is there."

The FBI which commenced investigations into the matter in November 2017 must have been assisted by some sources within Uganda's immigration services thus the need to place it under the tight watch of the military.

Rwandese have been flocking into Uganda unabetted and just recently, authorities in Masaka expressed alarm that buses were dumping Rwandans and Congolese in Buganda region.

The National Land Policy Chapter 7.4 advocates for the encouragement of cross border population movement thus;
    ".............are frequent as a result of conflict, ecological or environmental stress, or interactive accommodation among cross border communities sharing common heritage and culture.  A significant proportion of these people sometimes end up being classed as either refugees or internally displaced persons..................a framework for the management of these movements will need to be developed.  Among the strategies is the negotiation if protocols for the reciprocal treatment and settlement of mass cross border movements."

Such a provision in the land policy does not target Dinkas from Sudan, Luos from Kenya or Lendus from Congo but Museveni's preferred Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge.  Indeed, a few years back Rwandese expelled from Tanzania were given free land and citizenship.  Therefore, the ongoing militarisation of the immigration services in this regard.

Therefore, from the a foregoing it can be concluded that Museveni's action has been driven by selfish interests other than state security interests.  Moreover, for the last 33 years he has held power, it is the Security services that have been playing a behind the scenes role at all the immigration facilities and installations.

From the Airport to all border points, it is the security services that have been abetting heinous crimes like smuggling of contraband, drug and human trafficking, issuing of passports to non citizens etc.

You may also recall that when Gen. Aronda was posted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he arbitrarily sacked most of the staff members and replaced them with the home boys.

Linda Nyakarima , the widow to the deceased revealed what she thought could have triggered her husband’s death.  She told mourners that her husband was never welcomed by staff at the ministry of internal affairs due to the highly entrenched corruption that was in the ministry particularly the immigration department.

INFORMATION IS POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF UGANDA IS MUSEVENISM