President Museveni drops legal team

Publication date: Monday, 4th May, 2009

Odoi re-deployed

By Anne Mugisa

IN an unprecedented move, President Yoweri Museveni has dropped his senior private secretary in charge of legal affairs, Fox Odoi, as well as his entire legal team.

The other State House employees affected were private secretaries Justus Karuhanga, Mohammed Omari and Patricia Magara.

The President directed that all of them be redeployed in the Attorney General’s chambers, effective this month, sources said last evening.

Presidential press secretary Tamale Mirundi confirmed the redeployment of Odoi and the three other legal assistants to the President.

“The President said it was good for their careers that they move to the Attorney General’s Chambers,” Tamale noted.

“Some of them have served in State House for 16 years without an opportunity for promotion. This is not good for their career development.”

Other reports, however, indicate that the President was not happy with the team, particularly over the way it was handling land and other legal issues. Efforts to get comments from Odoi yesterday were fruitless.

The Solicitor General, Billy Kainamura, said there was no immediate arrangement to send replacements to State House.

“But if we are asked, we will get lawyers to be deployed there,” he told The New Vision.

He said Odoi and the other three had already reported to the Attorney General’s Chambers.

“The letters came and these people have touched base, though they have not started work.”

Kainamura dismissed claims that their removal from State House was a demotion.

“Are you saying that our services are inferior to those in State House? This is a normal process in the public service.”

Odoi, who in 2004 served as acting Principle Private Secretary to the President, has on a number of occasions been embroiled in controversies.

In the last presidential election, he was photographed on the front page of the Daily Monitor, wearing an NRM T-shirt and wielding an AK-47 rifle while several men were lying on the ground.

He was questioned by the Police over the incident but no criminal charges were preferred against him.

In 2004, a workers’ union at Makerere University Business School accused Odoi of pulling a pistol on a guard at the Nakawa campus but he denied the accusations.

Odoi was until a few years ago a regular guest on FM radio talk-shows. He was among the presidential aides who defended the Government’s decision to allocate prime land at Nakasero hill, where previously Uganda Television was located, to the Aya Brothers for the Hilton Hotel.

The project, which was initially meant to be ready for CHOGM, was delayed as the Sudanese company struggled to secure a loan.