LIRA
The family of former President Dr Apollo Milton Obote has ordered Gender, Labour and Social Development Minister Betty Amongi Ongom to immediately stop operating from President Obote’s home in Lira City.
The family, headed by the eldest son and heir, Tony Akaki, accuses Amongi of using the residence to campaign for President Yoweri Museveni and the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).
Local Media tndNews reported that Akaki, had seen with “disdain and disgust” reports that Amongi was campaigning for the continuation of what he described as a military dictatorship from President Obote’s home.
Akaki said the family’s anger was heightened by remarks allegedly made by Amongi in March in which she insulted former First Lady Maama Miria Obote, claiming that Obote’s wife had failed to uphold the Obote legacy and that Amongi herself was the one preserving and protecting the Obote name.
“Betty Amongi and her team of NRM goons and sympathizers should vacate President Obote’s home forthwith,” Akaki stated.
He said that with the tacit approval of his brothers, President Obote’s sons, the family is calling on Amongi to stop operating from any of their father’s homes, stressing that she was not welcome in any of them.
The sons accuse Amongi of infecting the Obote family with a reputation of mismanagement, alleged corruption, and the abuse of access to NRM patronage and public resources for personal aggrandisement.
Her actions, the family said, go against the values President Obote stood for and on which he built the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC).
Akaki cited a message delivered by President Obote in October 1998 to the AMO Club International Conference in London, in which Obote stated that the mission of the UPC since January 26, 1986, had been and would continue to be the removal of the dictatorship proclaimed by the NRA.
The Obote family said the struggle to free Uganda from what it described as the NRM dictatorship continues and strongly condemned all forms of human rights abuses, including illegal detentions, torture, violations of property rights, and what it termed the draconian repression of opposition political parties.
The statement further condemned economic mismanagement, theft, corruption, nepotism, political patronage and influence peddling, which the family said had become official policy under the NRM.
Akaki also referenced findings of a 2023 Parliamentary Select Committee that investigated alleged abuse of office, corruption and mismanagement at the National Social Security Fund, which found Betty Amongi guilty and recommended her immediate resignation.
The committee accused her of writing a letter to the NSSF board asking that shs6 billion be set aside for her projects.
He further recalled that in 2018, while serving as Minister for Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Amongi, also the Oyam South MP, faced calls to resign over allegations of involvement in grabbing land belonging to departed Asians and was grilled before a commission of inquiry into land matters chaired by Justice Catherine Bamugemereire.
“We the Obote family distance ourselves from such a despicable person and want her to vacate the Obote home,” the statement signed by Akaki concluded.
In June 2016, Akaki branded Amongi as “a mole sent to destroy the legacy of the Obote family and the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) party.
According to Akaki, as quoted by Eagle Online, the Obote family doesn’t want to associate with the NRM government.
“…the fact is that she [Amongi] is exposed. People always misunderstood the whole thing but Jimmy [Akena] was the target. We now know who the mole was,” Akaki, aged 53 said at the time.
In 2016, following his reelection to continue as President, Museveni appointed Amongi among the 80 cabinet ministers alongside three other opposition figures.
Since then, Amongi has served in the ruling government headed by President Museveni, now 81.
On April 6, 2013, Jimmy Akena married Betty Amongi in a lavish cultural ceremony attended by and partly made possible by President Museveni’s generous support.
