OPINION

By David Mukholi

The Forum for Democratic Party (FDC) has split into two factions. One is led by party president Eng. Patrick Oboi Amuriat and Nathan Nandala Mafabi, the secretary general.

The other is by Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, the party spokesman and Erias Lukwago, deputy party president (central).

The Amuriat-Nandala faction is based at Najjanankumbi, the FDC headquarters while the Ssemujju-Lukwago’s, who are backed by founding president Kizza Besigye, is operating at Katonga Road in Kampala in his office.

Nandala and Ssemujju are FDC legislators representing Budadiri West and Kira Municipality respectively.

Lukwago is Kampala’s Lord Mayor who run on the party ticket after crossing from the Democratic Party (DP) in 2020. Amuriat was FDC presidential candidate in the 2021 polls.

The party turmoil has been simmering over a period and it boiled over into the public arena late last month. This week, it increasingly looked like it was a battle between Besigye and Nandala.

Below are their statements woven and slightly edited to simulate a face-to-face exchange accentuating the clash between the two politicians.

At the centre of the conflict is the allegation that the party received sh7b ahead of the 2021 elections from a questionable source.

Besigye: I have intelligence reports that the money had been received by the party from the Museveni establishment.

Nandala: You have a contact in the State House. Why didn’t you get this informant to the select elders’ committee (SEC) appointed to probe the source of the money?

Besigye: In course of this controversy, one of the investigations I conducted was to establish the source of the new banknotes that were kept with me. The sh300m was in brand new sh20,000 notes wrapped in bundles of sh20m, each labelled ‘Bank of Uganda’ with serial numbers of all notes indicated. Although this wouldn’t be conclusive, it adds useful circumstantial evidence. I presented it to the SEC.

Nandala: We are ready for a forensic audit from 2005 to date. We have been running campaigns in FDC and every election period we fund elections. Nothing has ever happened because you were always the leader, but now you discovered that you are not. You are now the one fearing because you never campaigned for Amuriat. Our president Amuriat suffered while Lukwago and Ssemujju had billboards around Kampala. Where did the money for the billboards come from?

Besigye: I kept away from campaigning for Amuriat due to infiltration after suspicious money made its way into the party.

Nandala: In past elections, FDC spent more than sh10b. In 2021 only sh3b was raised. We sourced those funds legally. When Amuriat contested, we did the same sourcing and made campaigns possible. Why then is it a problem now when Amuriat is in the picture, but was never an issue then when you were the candidate?

Besigye: The FDC leadership is likely to resort to the State for protection, if the party disagreement escalates. With the crisis, FDC is headed for a disaster like earlier political parties.

Nandala: There was money we got for the nomination of our candidates and the sources are very clean, not from the State House.

Besigye: There is some kind of coup in the party. The party is captured, but I still think the resilience of FDC can be relied on to free the party to function in normal ways. Even as we organise the liberation of this country, I think members of the party have a duty to attempt to at least liberate their party.

Nandala: I have a document which talks about sh300m for agents which we handed to you and you returned it in instalments. If it was ‘dirty money’, you would have returned it at once.

Besigye: It is fair to give details regarding this ‘dirty money’. The sh300m you gave me. First, you have been telling lies that the money was meant for agents in that election.

Besigye: So, it is a lie that money was extended to me to keep for party agents.

Nandala: You are a person who can blatantly lie.

Nandala: In the run-up to the 2021 election, we asked you for sh300m meant for our agents across the country. You came to my office at Kyambogo and instead told us that you had agreed with National Unity Platform (NUP) to pay agents where it was strong and FDC should pay agents where they were also strong. We asked how you were going to gauge the strength in those places. This did not go down well with you and you never returned to us.

Besigye: You told me the reason you were giving me the money is that you feared Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) which was demanding money from your companies. That if you had it banked, URA would pounce on it and that it would be difficult to recover it. I sympathised with you for having tax issues with URA. If the money was meant for agents, I would have provided the obvious solution that it be placed on the party account. My first concern came with the arrival of the money at my home at 10:00 pm.

Nandala: The money was delivered at 7:00 pm because you had said you would be at home in the evening.

Besigye: You rang me and I said how are you going to deliver the money during the COVID-19 lockdown curfew. You said don’t worry it is about to arrive and indeed before long, somebody was honking at the gate to my home.

Nandala: My driver delivered the money using my car and it had a sticker during the COVID-19 lockdown (at 7:00 pm). During the lockdown MPs were entitled to stickers to move. So, for you to say how can I deliver the money at night during COVID-19 is a lack of truthfulness.

Twitter:@dmukholi1