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Despite the uproar stirred by the sh500 million service award to the former Leader of Opposition (LOP), Mathias Mpuuga Nsamba, the Nyendo-Mukungwe legislator says he is eagerly waiting for the first installment this quarter.

Mpuuga insists that he qualifies for the service award due to the diligent service he offered in his capacity.

“I am waiting for the first installment this quarter. I'm entitled to receive this money because it was duly approved by the Commission of Parliament,” Mpuuga said during a radio interview on Saturday.

The leadership of the National Unity Platform (NUP) led by the party president, Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, on Thursday asked Mpuuga to resign from the commission of Parliament.

Mpuuga also serves as deputy president of NUP.

However, Mpuuga, who was replaced by Joel Ssenyonyi as the LOP a few months ago, vowed not to resign in a public statement he issued on Friday (March 1).

Mpuuga was responding to the party statement signed by Kyagulanyi that circulated on different social media platforms on Thursday (February 29) calling for his resignation.

Appearing on Buganda Kingdom’s official Radio CBS on Saturday (March 2), Mpuuga indicated that Kyagulanyi and NUP have no powers to remove him from the commission. He also denied an wrongdoing.



"I have never involved myself in corruption, I don’t condone it and that’s not what I represent," he said.

According to Mpuuga, the commission observed that it was an omission not to cater for the LOP upon retirement as Uganda embraced multi-party political dispensation in 2005.

“The Parliamentary Commission is established by the Constitution and it mandates it to establish modes of operation to take care of the welfare of the leaders in office and the incoming ones and what it did was within the mandate,” he said.

Mpuuga went on to blame some leaders in the party for using the situation to settle political questions.

He went on to blame them for misleading and mis-advising the party president into taking squarely wrong decisions.

The controversy erupted following the linked Parliamentary Commission minutes of May 6, 2022, which revealed a decision of a one-time pay-off service award of sh500 million for the LOP and another pay-off of sh400 million to backbench Parliament commissioners.

The terms of the payoff stipulated that it would remain unchanged regardless of the length of tenure in office.