On June 8, 2018, Amina Sijali Abiriga, the wife of former Arua Municipality Member of Parliament Ibrahim Abiriga, received a call from her husband at around 4:00pm.

Sijali, who has now relocated from their Kawanda home to Arua, told New Vision that it was common for her husband to call her whenever he was from Parliament to find out how the family was faring. “On this fateful day, I had traveled to Arua.

When he called, I told him we were okay. He then sent money and asked me to buy enough food and prepare for the Idd festival day, which was a week away. I asked him whether he was travelling somewhere and all that he told me was, ‘you do not know God’s plans,’ Sijali recalls her husband’s last words.

She says she proceeded to prepare a meal for her children to break the fast that evening. However, as it was approaching 7:00pm, she received a call from a neighbor breaking the news of her husband’s death. “At first I treated it as a joke and dismissed it as fake news and hang up.

But hardly had I placed my phone on the table than I received another call prompting me to switch on the TV,” Sijali says. All the TV stations were broadcasting the death of her husband. Abiriga and his brother, who was the driver-cum bodyguard, Saidi Butele Kongo, had been shot dead as they approached their home.

They were killed by men who were riding a motorbike and sped off after their mission. Abiriga was killed with the same precision used in the March 2017 murder of Police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi. “I panicked, cried, and wanted to travel to Kampala that same night, but relatives quickly came to my aid and forced me to stay in Arua,” Sijali recalls.

She was, however, able to travel to Kampala the next morning and never believed when she saw her husband’s bullet-riddled car still parked by the roadside. Two years later, Sijali told New Vision that they were yet to get a report on what exactly led to the murder of Abiriga and Kongo. “No one has given us their investigation findings.

We desperately want to know who ordered his killing and why,” Sijali said. She said life has never been the same for the family ever since Abiriga, who was their breadwinner, was shot dead.

“We are, however, grateful to the Government, especially President Yoweri Museveni, for the help he has accorded us. At least the children are going to school,” Sijali added. For the family, Sijali said life has been so lonely.

She relocated from Kawanda to Arua to try and support the family. “Life is not easy. I have been forced to run a small shop just next to home to keep myself busy and sustain the family as I try to keep away the memories of my husband’s brutal murder,” she said.

Sijali said sometimes, she is lost for words to explain to her youngest child, who is now four years old, what happened to his father. “I tell them their father was killed, but they keep asking me who did it?” Sijali said.

She said they have processed Abiriga’s benefits from Parliament and bought a commercial house registered in the names of all the children and that the Kawanda home had been given to Abiriga’s other younger wife who appeared later with a child sired by him. “I cannot visit that home because whenever I go there, I am locked out,” Sijali said.

 DEATH REMAINS A MYSTERY

Abiriga’s death remains a puzzle and Police is yet to get leads that could possibly result in the arrest of the suspects who waylaid him and shot him dead before fleeing. Shortly after Abiriga’s death, top security officials thronged the murder scene led by the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence boss Abel Kandiho, Internal Security Organisation head Kaka Bagyenda and Police led by the Deputy Inspector General of Police Maj. Gen. Muzeyi Sabiiti, giving hope that his killers would perhaps be arrested as soon as possible. But two years later, the hope seems to have faded.

Criminal Investigations Directorate spokesperson Charles Twine confirmed that Police had not yet arrested any suspect in connection with the murder.

He, however, said investigations were still going on. At the release of the 2018 Crime Report last year, the Inspector General of Police, Martins Okoth Ochola, said even though Police had arrested several suspects in heinous crimes committed within that year, no suspect had been arrested in connection with Abiriga’s murder. 

WHAT COULD HAVE LED TO ABIRIGA’S DEATH?

So many questions remain unanswered. Who ordered Abiriga’s killing and why? New Vision has established from friends and family members that there had been several attempts on the life of the deceased and his family members and some of these incidents had been reported. Several attempts were made to protect Abiriga, including providing him an armed guard, but even with all the precautions taken, he still lived in fear.

REBEL LINKAGE
Security sources revealed that at the time of his death, Abiriga had reportedly been contacted by some elements who wanted to help in the formation of a rebel group that was allegedly actively recruiting in some parts of DR Congo. “We were tipped about this and investigated but we didn’t go very far with the investigations,” a security source revealed. There are fears that Abiriga may have leaked secrets about the planned recruitment of rebels and paid the price with his life.

Security sources who spoke to New Vision said there were many loose ends that could have pointed to the reason why Abiriga was killed and that had they been followed by security agencies, possibly the motive of his death could have been unravelled.

One such incident was in October 2017 when unknown people suspected to be arsonists attacked Abiriga’s house at Anyafio village in Arua at around 11:00pm.

At the time of the attack, Sijali was in the house with 10 children and the arsonists took advantage of the heavy downpour in the night to cut the wire mesh on the window.

They attempted to push in a five-liter jerrycan full of petrol to the sitting room. On realising that they had been noticed, they decided to hang it on the door where Police found it. It also remains unclear whether Police did actual fingerprint dusting on the jerrycan to track down the suspects.

In April 2017, Abiriga, in an interview with New Vision, said he had met the President and told him that his life was in danger, claiming to have been receiving threatening messages and calls from his constituents and radical activists over his huge support on the proposed constitutional amendment to get rid of the presidential age limit.

The legislator claimed he had told the President that some unknown people were trailing him from Parliament up to his home in Kawanda.

“I am not safe, I urgently need security to protect my family from such hooligans who can put our lives in danger,” he said. Were there any attempts to find out which numbers had called the deceased?

Abiriga excited after receiving a pair of sandals donated to him by President Museveni during the 2017 budget speech.

WAS IT POLITICAL ASSASSINATION?

President Yoweri Museveni visited the murder scene a day after and issued a statement in which he said: “As investigations are going on, we cannot rule out personal motives for the murder.

However, there is a high probability that this killing was a political assassination because of his commitment to the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party. If that is the case, the killers have miscalculated and shown their bankruptcy.

Why kill somebody because you do not agree with him? Why don’t you defeat his ideas with your better ones?” the President wondered. It was a known fact that Abiriga was an ardent Museveni and NRM fanatic given his yellow dress code.

He was also among the masterminds of the lifting the age limit provision in the Constitution to allow President Museveni contest in the 2021 presidential elections.

Sources in security also noted that the killing of Abiriga could have been carried out by elements who wanted to send a message to President Museveni, who had two days earlier assured the nation during the State of Nation Address at Serena that the country was now safe and that security was about to bring to justice the killers of Kaweesi.

The killing might have been intended to remind the President that the killer cells in the country were still active, contrary to his belief that they were being wiped out.

“This could have been a message to the country that they were going after the wrong suspects and that yes, the killers were still active and they can kill at will and don’t get arrested,” the security source revealed. Abiriga was killed on the day the President was reportedly chairing the National Security Council meeting in Entebbe.

The source also revealed that the fact that the killers were still using the same pattern of motorbikes that was used in the killing of the Muslim sheiks, Maj. Suleiman Kiggundu and Kaweesi, some of whom were heavily armed and in broad daylight, was proof enough that they were still around and active.

COULD THE INVESTIGATIONS HAVE BEEN BUNGLED?

A senior security expert told Sunday Vision that the investigations into the murder of Abiriga may have been bungled just like other cases such as that of Kaweesi and former assistant director in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Joan Kagezi.

The source noted that preliminary investigations indicated that the killers accessed the area several times and possibly monitored Abiriga’s movements and that what security should have done is to analyse closely all call data emanating from the area — both before and during the murder, and then the movement of those calls on the day the Abiriga was killed.

“In cases where you do not have sufficient evidence to pin suspects, you rely on other means like phone triangulation. It should have been necessary for security teams to try and pick which phones were present at the scene shortly before, during, and after the murder,” the source noted.

The source revealed that since the killers were at the scene and fled, it was possible that they had phones and as they fled, different masts recorded their movements.

“Having picked the numbers that were on the scene, the investigators would have screened them to find out which phone left the scene immediately after the shooting, and which phones were immediately switched off,” the source noted. Two years later, the family and the nation still awaits answers.

Abiriga's factfile