I regret going to the bush to fight Museveni, former minister says

President Museveni (L) and Max Omeda when he was sworn in as minister of State for Housing in 1996. Photo by Henry Lubega

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Orphaned at the age of three his sister was married off under age to raise money for his education. Under the circumstances Max Omeda had to cut school short to join police. He told Sunday Monitor’s Henry Lubega about life as a prime minister’s security detail, running into the bush to fight the NRM government and later being apoointed state minister in the same government.

I was born in 1946 in Adivala Village, Atira Sub-county in Serere District. My parents were not educated at all, and only my mother was only baptised while my father was not.

I was orphaned at the age of three and my mother raised me single-handedly though she soon also passed away. Before her death, she had married off my young sister and used the animals paid in dowry to educate me. It was much later that I learnt that my sister was married off before the age of consent so as to get bride price for me to get resources to attend school.

When my mother died, it’s our uncle who made sure we had food but insisted we don’t leave our home, fearing that our land would be grabbed.

I started my education at Atira Primary School but because it was not a complete primary school, I had to move to Kadungulu Primary School a sub-county away in Kasilo County. I would later join Serere Junior Secondary.
At Serere Junior Secondary, I had heard a lot about Aggery Memorial School in Buganda. It was the first private secondary school in East Africa.

During one of the holiday students gathering, I listened to one of the students from that school, he had very good spoken English and I vowed to go to that school for my Senior Secondary and in 1961, I turned down a vacancy at Kachonga S.S to go to Aggrey Memorial School. I used to travel by train from Soroti to Kampala since I had no relative to stay with in Kampala during the holidays.

Leaving school to join police
After Senior Four, my conditions dictated I could not continue with education since I had no helping hand. When I sat my O-Level in 1964, I immediately joined the Uganda Police Force even before the results came back.

I joined Kibuli Police Training School for nine months, where I did well in class work and shooting. Upon passing us out, I was given a linear which holds the whistle; it is given to a person who has been top in class, the rest of the constables were using chains to hold their whistles.

My first assignment was to work as a clerk during the referendum in the lost counties of Buyaga and Bugangaizi. After the referendum, I went back to Kibuli Training School from where I received my first deployment to the police training school as one of the lecturers and instructors.
I refused the deployment because it had no chances of promotion. I was seen as a stubborn fellow and the bosses sought ways of sacking me from the Force pretty fast. To do so, they posted me to Entebbe Police Station. There, if you made one mistake, you would be sacked immediately.

The first day I reported I was assigned the airport VIP lounge.
After a short while, the Force was selecting within its rank and file officers to join special branch and others to work in the prime minister’s office. I was among those selected and first went to Nairobi for training. From there, we proceeded to Israel.

From Israel I was deployed to the prime minister’s office in the security section. By then, I was still a police constable.
While in the prime minister’s office in 1968, it was discovered that I had a secondary leaving certificate and I was made an assistant inspector of police.

In 1969, officers at the prime minister’s office were taken for a military training to Russia then known as USSR, at Vishram College in Moscow. After almost three years, I obtained a diploma in military law, and clandestine work.

With Obote to Singapore
I came back to Uganda in late 1970 and at the beginning of 1971, I was part of the president’s advance party to Singapore for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit. The coup of January 1971 found me in Singapore and that’s how I ended up in Tanzania as an exile. In exile, about seven of us who had qualified in certain fields like intelligence were asked to return home by the rebel group that had been formed in Tanzania.

We were advised to manoeuvre and find a way back and be reinstated in government service, gather intelligence information and pass it to them. On coming back, I was appointed head of special branch in Mpigi District, but stayed there for a short time. I managed to make some contacts within government and I was later transferred to Soroti as head of special branch.

However, my stay in Soroti was cut short by Amin’s visit to Serere Research Station. When he saw me, he asked how I got there. I knew that was not going to be good for me and I requested police authorities to take me back to Kampala.
In Kampala, I did not go to special branch, I went to the Ministry of Health security department; this was to confuse Amin on where exactly I was. Even at the Health ministry, I did not stay long; I moved to Foreign Service where I was given to man one of the desks there.

In all these places, I was gathering information and passing it on to the group I left in Tanzania, but this put my life at risk. With this kind of clandestine work, I had to find a way of getting another job to keep me moving in and out of the country without raising suspicion. I left Foreign Service and went to Coffee Marketing Board (CMB).

When I joined CMB, I became more active because I had been posted to Malaba and I opened another office in Kisumu. This gave me an opportunity to move in and out of the country easily, passing on information with ease. I stayed at the border until Amin was overthrown.

After Amin’s fall in 1979, I came back home and joined Soroti District Council as chairman of the finance committee, a position I kept until the fall of the UPC government in 1985.

When Museveni overthrew the Tito Okello Lutwa regime in 1986, I was elected RCIII chairman Atira Sub-county until when I had a misunderstanding with Rwakatare - then District Administrator (D.A) - Soroti. He was looking for people who had served in the UPC government and those who fought in Luweero. I fell in the category of people who had served in the UPC government.

One Friday, he visited Atira Sub-County; I hosted him and ended the day with a football match. A day after Rwakatare’s visit, someone came and told me ‘there is a meeting to be held on Tuesday in Atira and you will be arrested during that meeting.” I decided to skip the meeting following the tip off.

A day after the meeting, I rode a bicycle to Soroti to the DA’s office in Soroti and asked him why he wanted to meet me. Before he could answer anything, I told him that I knew he wanted to arrest me but we would meet in Kampala
When I got home, I told my family there was nothing I could do about the pending arrest. There was a police officer I knew who had a gun; I went to him and asked him to give me his gun since it was idle. With that gun, I decided we better fight to defend ourselves.

Going to the bush
Ours was not a politically-motivated by any person. It was purely self-defense because after knowing that they are after me I said let me take off and see how best I can secure my life.

When the numbers of those escaping arrest swelled, the situation became a rebellion and people like Eregu later nicknamed Hitler. There were other retired lieutenants, captains and many deserters. We ended up with a big force that we called Uganda People’s Army (UPA).

This was an army of people who went out in self-defence though it later turned out to be an army that some politicians claimed to have owned us calling us their boys; we were never anybody’s boys because no one sent us to the bush we went there in self-defense.

Those who claimed to own us like Peter Otai never gave us even a single gun, money, food, or any support. He even claimed to be the chairman of UPA and the government took him seriously.

When Otai shouted while in London to be our chairman, he capitalised on our thirst for someone to help us, and thought we had found one, who will help us get some support.

He disappointed us, he was a leader who never came to see his army, and he kept on asking us to feed him with information about the war for him to publish in papers in Europe from the comfort of his house in London.
Our guns multiplied from those we secured from the government soldiers killed during the war.

Ministers kidnapped
One day, three government ministers, Okurut, Ekinu, and Aporu were sent by the government to talk to us out of the bush. However, they got abducted in Ngora.

I talked to Sam Otai who led the group that abducted the ministers to release them. Mzee Swau, the administrator of Serere Research Station where I was the political commissar, also insisted on detaining the officials.
But Sam Otai said he had rang his grandfather Perter Otai who told him that the ministers should be detained because it would give the rebels international publicity.
I ordered him to take them from my home area of Serere. He took them to Katakwi, where I still followed them insisting the ministers should be released.

Aporu and Okurut were released first. But before Ekinu would be released, government troops attacked our base and in the ensuing fight minister Ekinu was shot and killed.
In May 1992, I commanded all the remaining rebels in the bush to come out and I declared the end of rebellion in Teso at Soroti Flying School when the government was launching Northern Uganda Rehabilitation Programme.
On person I can credit for ending the Teso war was Museveni. He made sure that any person who was captured was not killed. Whoever surrendered voluntarily was not mistreated; that person was given a chance to go back and live a normal life that also discouraged people from continuing with the war.
People like Musa Ecweru, who was arrested bringing arms, was kept in detention for some time and released. When the rebel numbers reduced and only left with a group of thugs terrorising and stealing people’s property, we realised the war had lost direction. We had not gone to the bush to kill people.

The fighters nicknamed me bishop, because I was against the killing of innocent civilians. I sat with the remaining group in the bush and advised them that there is no need of giving conditions of our surrender because it was forgiving those it arrests or who had surrendered.

We assured the president that some of us were not ready to continue with military life though he had promised to recruit us. Personally I had been offered the post of the divisional political commissar, but I declined it as I was interested in joining politics.

The President said: “Max I don’t think you will be elected after your people killed so many people who would elect you?” I told him most of the killings were done by his soldiers.

Life after the bush
I contested to represent Serere in the Constituent Assembly and won. While in the CA, I went to Nairobi to convince some of our colleagues in exile like Colonel William Omaria but I was arrested there for seven days until the government of Uganda intervened and I was released.
After the CA, I contested to represent Serere in the 6th Parliament and I won. That is why in 1996, I was appointed minister of State for Housing. But during a mini reshuffle, I was taken to health as state minister for General Duties.
I lost the seat in the 2001 elections. But when the President learnt of the circumstances under which I lost, he appointed me RDC Gulu. I went to Gulu at the peak of the LRA insurgency and served for six years.
I knew Kony when he came to Teso to join up our forces but we did not agree with his work methods, and chased him from Teso. His desire to team with us was based on the earlier interest of us joining with Lt Col Opeto’s group in Lira, but they were stopped by the late Milton Obote.

Before Kony came, Alice Lakwena tried joining us but to us she was a tourist, she even didn’t know the army’s first lesson and we chased her.

After six years in Gulu, I was sent to Soroti for a short time then to Amuria. From there, I went to Serere when it became a district and later retired.
Before I retired, I had read as a private candidate and sat for A-Level then went on to do a diploma in Personnel Industrial Management.
In retirement, I get assignments from different groups and associations like the Athletics Federation of Uganda as a commissioner for marketing, and coordinating over seven districts for the fisheries department to see that people use proper fishing gear.

Through the years, I have worked with governments from Obote I to the present. The first Obote government leads in political detention I know because I was part of it, Amin’s government leads in killings, while the current government has the highest corruption ever witnessed in Uganda.

Regrets
My only regret is getting emotional and getting a gun and fighting the government. I would have run away to some place like Kinyara. This decision affected my children. By now, I would have them out of school. That’s the only regret I have in life. I had 16 children but along the way I lost two of them.

ABOUT MAX OMEDA

In November 2005, Max Omeda resigned as Gulu Resident District Commissioner (RDC) to contest for the NRM flag bearer for the Soroti District chairman post but lost the party primaries.

Omeda came third with 595 votes losing to Soroti Municipality Mayor George Mike Egunyu, who polled 1,068 votes.

Earlier on, he had denounced rebellion to represent Serere in the Constituent Assembly and won. While in the CA, he went to Nairobi to convince some of his vcolleagues in exile like Colonel William Omaria but was arrested there for seven days until the government of Uganda intervened and he was released.
After the CA, he contested to represent Serere in the Sixth Parliament and won. That is why in 1996 he was appointed minister of State for Housing. But during a mini-reshuffle, he was taken to Health ministry as state minister for General Duties.

He lost the seat in the 2001 elections. But he claims that when the President learnt about the circumstances under which he lost, he appointed him RDC Gulu. He served in Gulu at the peak of the LRA insurgency for six years.

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