‘Kony refused to sign peace deal over Shs360m’
Lira.
Rebel leader Joseph Kony would perhaps have signed the peace deal in Juba if he had received $100,000 (about Shs360m) that had been mobilised to support his activities, a former soldier who participated in the talks has said.
Col (rtd) Tonny Otoa, who participated in the Juba peace talks as a delegate of the Lango Cultural Foundation, which was largely an observer, told this newspaper that Kony on one occasion, referred to members of his negotiating team as “thieves”.
“He (Kony) said these are thieves. I cannot sign an agreement drafted by thieves,” Col Otoa said.
As plans to hold talks between the government and Kony gathered momentum, the original members of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) delegation held consultation tours in 2007, during which they were expected to collect money to deliver to Kony.
Former Oyam North MP Krispus Ayena Odongo, a Kampala-based lawyer, who was the legal advisor to the LRA negotiating team, estimates that $100,000 could have been collected in the process, but that only $9,000 was handed over to Kony. This was the time Mr Martin Ojul led the LRA negotiating team.
“The mistake that Ojul made was to put this money in the hands of Santa Okot. And when we went back (to Juba), Kony asked for the money and the chairman (Ojul) could only account for about $9,000, which was later given to Kony,” Mr Ayena says.
Ms Santa Okot was the Woman MP for Pader District and, our sources say, she now lives in the US. Efforts to contact her for this article were futile. Mr Ojul, who we also failed to reach, lived abroad for years until he showed up to lead the LRA peace delegation in Juba. Sources say he now lives and works in Kampala but we were unable to reach him for this article.
Kony annoyed
But after the meeting in which the said $9,000 was handed over to Kony instead of $100,000, Col Otoa says the rebel leader was very angry and he decided to fire Mr Ojul as the head of his delegation, replacing him with David Nyekorach Matsanga.
The other members of the delegation who were fired, according to Col Otoa, were Denis Okiroro, Ray Acama and Godfrey Ayoo. Mr Ayena also resigned as legal advisor to the team.
“What I finally came to realise was that they (LRA negotiating team) would inflate the number of delegates, cost of their accommodation and amount paid to them as allowances would be quadrupled or even made 10 times,” Col Otoa said.
Ayena responds
Whereas Mr Ayena suggests that the financial problems were originated by Ms Santa Okot, who ended up skipping the meeting with Kony, Col Otoa blames the entire LRA negotiating team. This makes Mr Ayena angry.
“That is very stupid (saying that the LRA negotiating team swindled Kony’s money). First of all by the time Otoa met Kony, the idea of signing the peace deal was not yet there. We were still negotiating,” Mr Ayena said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
“He (Col Otoa) is a very pretentious man. I don’t like his gut very much. I don’t know what he is insinuating. Is he insinuating that some of us could be responsible?” Mr Ayena asked.
He added: “And what I know for a fact is that Kony never met anybody and even that bit of money confusion could not have come to the attention of Otoa. You know the problem with Otoa is that he wants to talk bigger than he knows.”
Who is Col Otoa
Col Otoa, now in his late 70s, was a fighter in the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA).
He fled to exile when Milton Obote was overthrown by Tito Okello in 1985, and later returned to serve in President Museveni’s National Resistance Army before retiring. Currently a clan chief in Lango, Col Otoa lives in Lira town.
After failing to sign the peace agreement, Kony relocated his forces to the Garamba forest national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and later to the jungles of the Central African Republic, where a joint force supported by the Americans is currently pursuing them.
