On Wednesday evening, a private meeting was held at the headquarters of the troubled Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party and the aim was to strategise on how to counter the threats they had received that Kira Municipality legislator Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda and Kampala Lord Mayor Ssalongo Erias Lukwago faction were planning a deadly move through the party chairperson ambassador Wasswa Birigwa to evict them from the party headquarters and take control of it.
Highly placed sources at Najjanankumbi revealed to theGrapevine that a decision was taken not to use security agencies like police because it was going to put them in bad light and to prove the allegations that they are working for President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as Ssemujju faction claims.
They resolved to use ruthless gangs to stop the impending takeover by Ssemujju and his group.
Sources divulged that for almost a month, Patrick Amuriat Oboi, the FDC party president and his Secretary General Nathan Nandala Mafabi had been planning on how to use gangs who have helped Lukwago survive in Kampala city politics since 2006.
These sources said that to achieve their plan, they had to contact one of the former legislators in Kampala city who also owns a gang of goons to help them penetrate Lukwago’s inner cycle and he executed the assignment successfully.
Lukwago confirmed that Amuriat’s camp contacted his boys who helped them to hire the gang that humiliated Birigwa who had plans to address a press conference at the party headquarters.
“You mean I don’t know where they hired those goons from? I know, and I will tell you for sure, I told you when it comes to self defence, I can be a warlord. And that’s the reason I have survived in the murky waters of Kampala,” Lukwago said.
He added,” Do you think you can survive in Kampala that long? Just ask one politician who has survived in the politics of Kampala, like myself. When attacked, I’m like a porcupine, you attack, I repulse you,” Lukwago boasted.
He added that the gangs that politicians and ruthless businessmen always hire are in his territory and he knows them very well.
Sources divulged that it was not easy to convince their immediate commanders and that’s the reason why they decided to approach the matter from the top command and directives were given to boys to rush to Najjanankumbi and execute the mission.
Lukwago revealed that the commanders of the Najjanankumbi gang were highly paid to look for deadly goons who do not fear death.
However, he later contradicted himself when he said that the ones who commanded the chaos at Najjanankumbi on Thursday were not his but he knows where they operate from.
“You cannot operate in the city without intelligence. I would be disingenuous. I would be lying to say that I don’t know where to find those goons, I know,” Lukwago noted when he appeared before Patrick Kamara’s On the Spot on NTV Uganda.
Insiders among the gangs’ commanders told theGrapevine that this is the second time they are turning against Lukwago.
The first time was at park yard market which was burnt down after these goons were hired by one of the city businessmen who had interest on the said land.
The gangs who were heavily paid forgot that they once paid allegiance to Lukwago and violently attacked him and his team.
Ssemujju confirmed that politicians in Kampala always hire gangs but some politicians don’t pay them; that’s why they steal people’s properties, especially phones, to pay themselves.
He narrated that one time he hired them for his political campaigns but in the middle of the campaign, they turned against him and violently attacked his supporters, stealing everything they had in possession including undressing them.
He had to hire another group to protect him and his supporters from the goons he first hired.
Ssemujju was appearing on Meddie Nsereko Ssebuliba’s CBS FM’s ‘Kiriza oba ggana’ political talk show where he warned that Amuriat and Mafabi cannot defeat his camp when it comes to politics of violence.
He added that the gangs at Najjanankumbi were paid Shs30,000 each at the end of the day and were hired from Kawempe.
However a gang commander who was recently released from Luzira prison told theGrapevine that from experience, when he looks at the Najjanankumbi operation, Amuriat’s camp should have used not less than Shs30m because it was handled from the top command and the operation involved betraying their known clients.
According to Birigwa’s statement, when he entered inside the headquarters where the goons were deployed, he found more than 50 of them.
Birigwa noted that when he tried to move out of the party headquarters, he approached a goon whom he knows by the name of Meddie Musisi and pleaded with him to open for him the gate.
However, Meddie blasted him and ordered him with immediate effect to go back and sit down which he did until he was saved by his boys who were outside who brought the ladder for him to jump over the wall.
When we asked this experienced gang commander about the Birigwa Saga, he rubbished the FDC chairman’s explanation, noting that he was left to go.
Insiders in Najjanankumbi told theGrapevine that early in the morning, there was another group of gangs who came at Najjanankumbi but upon realising that there was already deployment sanctioned by their top command, they withdrew.
theGrapevine is still investigating to establish whether they will return the money because they were paid in advance before moving in and finding another group already in charge.
He added that during political campaigns, they are always on the market. That’s why they have to do extra training to build muscles.
“Nowadays we don’t need to move with pavers, weighing stones and knives, no! We use our bodies to execute our operations because even if we find security on the way, they cannot arrest us because of your bodies but we realized previously that they always arrested us once they found us with these deadly weapons. And sometimes it was our own colleagues who betrayed us,” a goon commander told theGrapevine during the course of doing this investigative story.
He warned the public, especially journalists that once they learn that gangs were hired to take control of a certain place, they should be on alert because they are not selective when attacking the enemy.
“For use we don’t know whether you are a journalists or not. We are like soldiers or even more because we don’t have a disciplinary code of conduct to follow like soldiers,” he boasted.
However, Mafabi apologized on behalf of the FDC leadership for what happened on Thursday noting that the investigations into this nasty incident have kicked off and culprits will be brought to book.
Police have not yet come up with the statement even though they were seen observing the events from a distance near FDC offices.
They even fought with one of the private security guards who was chasing them away from standing and parking their patrols at the entrance of his boss’s supermarket.
The security guard was arrested and his gun taken away from him.
