Nsibambi: Academic icon, lion of language roars to land of no return

Kampala- Apolo Nsibambi in life carved out an aura of perfection, high integrity and sophistication.

His nature depicted an aristocratic refinement. It was a kind akin to the regal upbringing among the landed gentry.

Indeed, the former premier’s late father, Simeon Nsibambi, owned expansive land in Buloba on Kampala-Mityana highway.
The inheritance by Apolo Nsibambi and siblings, as such, was plentiful. Their father bequeathed to the local church up to 88 acres, said Mr Mephibosheth Sekitoleko, as he supervised the construction of the grave in which Nsibambi’s body will be interred tomorrow.

Pro Nsibambi passed on May 28, aged 78. In Kasero village, he had set up a huge farm on their ancestral land where, according to his workers, he practiced on the farm values he radiated in the lecture room and high-up government jobs.

“He treated us well, but he is particular on assignments and this instilled a lot of discipline in us,” said Mr Peter Kakooza, a manager of the farm in Buloba, who worked with the professor for four decades.
“He (Nsibambi) has had this farm at heart and, since the coming of mobile phones, he would call on a daily basis to check on us,” Mr Kakooza said.

An accomplished academic, one President Museveni described post-humously as “excellent”, Nsibambi ran his earthly race on his rules to stardom by rejecting mediocrity from childhood.

Mr John Nagenda, a senior presidential adviser and a relative to the deceased, said Nsibambi was a determined person and always wanted the truth to come out.

That earned him integrity and respect among peers and associates as well as reciprocal love with siblings and parents, including extended family members.

“He really believed in it,” said Mr Nagenda.

On the day of Nsibambi’s demise, Mr Museveni tweeted: “He was a true patriot and great academic.”
The feat the deceased wore on his gigantic sleeves sparkled from a distance: a trail-blazing Ugandan political scholar, principled family man of religious virtue and distinguished politician of unblemished public service record.

One norm he exuded, friends and foes alike agree, was being a time stickler. As prime minister of Uganda for 12 years until 2011, Nsibambi upstaged the legendary self-importance of political executives by racing to Cabinet meetings ahead of subordinates.
“He kept time and would get upset, or can I say a little mad, if one was even a minute late to cabinet meetings or in parliament,” said Ms Zoe Bakoko Bakoru, who served as Gender minister when Nsibambi was premier.

That work ethic kept government bigwigs, many vulnerable to the syndrome of keeping audiences on long wait, on the tenterhooks.
It was a decorum long unseen that it birthed both joy for reformists, and bother for habitual late-comers, in conduct of government business.

That his actions birthed conflicting consequences was unsurprising. The footprints of this paradox were visible when he transitioned from a free-speaking intellectual, unrelenting monarchist to a liberal government servant.
Former minister Daudi Migereko was a student of Nsibambi before fate brought them together again in government; the former a government chief whip and the latter prime minister.

“I was a student at Makerere and students would scramble to belong to his class because of his power of oratory, and the ease with which he related with students,”Mr Migereko recollected, adding, “He (Nsibambi) took a lot of interests in discussing topics of feudalism, integration of East Africa and governance.”

His name
As a scholar and government official, the ex-premier deployed colourful language to convey his message, often enriched with humour.
There was likely more to his clarity. His name Nsibambi, derived from the Luganda proverb, ensibambi edibya mutere (literally translated as poor packaging renders buyers to spurn a good commodity), challenged the premier not to take a gamble with ambiguity in messaging.

His laughter was a roar from the throat and his baritone voice echoed with authority, even from a distant podium.
Nsibambi chose and sometimes stretched pronounciation of certain words intentionally, and his self-assured speech left his audience either in confusion or wonderment.

One word he liked to use was “lugubrious”, meaning sad and serious, and the terminology would later become his moniker.

Those who despised him as just a theoretical politician were confounded when he practiced the principles he taught in class.

President Museveni first tapped the professor as a government representative to the Constituent Assembly (CA) that enacted the 1995 Constitution. One flaming issue at the time was federo, a form of self-government that Buganda kingdom aggressively clamoured for.
Having played a pivotal role in the restoration of the kingdom in 1993, after a 27-year interruption occasioned by Milton Obote’s 1966 abolition of traditional kingdoms, the Baganda banked on Nsibambi’s astuteness to get what they had, lost.

The Professor was on the CA committee that thrashed out details of the draft constitutional provision on federalism and decentralisation, and a vote endorsing the latter crashed his soul as it did damage his reputation in the eyes of Mengo insiders.
Things were made worse that he championed negotiations on the kingdom’s side for return of its properties expropriated by the central govern ment, otherwise called Ebyaffe, and Buganda never secured all it wanted. Critics labelled him a sell-out to the central government.

Nsibambi was a member of the Ssabataka Supreme Council and attended the January 9, 1995 meeting with President Museveni on return of Ebyaffe and grant of federo, three years after the current Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi, then a prince, on June 7, 1992, appointed him to head Mengo’s negotiation committee.

Things did not all work by script. Buganda picked some gains, recorded many losses.
And Nsibambi was later absorbed in the executive wing of President Museveni’s government, at different times holding the portfolios of minister of Education, minister of Public Service (where he pioneered timely payment of salaries to public official) and later as prime minister.

“He did not only replace me as Prime Minister, but even [as head prefect at King’s College Budo]. We were friends from then …he has been a very persistent academic, diligent and a great historian,” said his predecessor premier Kintu Musoke.
Nsibambi’s two successor in that office; Amama Mbabazi and incumbent Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda extolled him too.
“Obviously,” said Mr Mbabazi, “the nation loses a diligent, honest, decent democrat who advocated for freedom, democracy and justice in Uganda.”

In his eulogy, Dr Rugunda said: “He was not one of those who were politicking; extremely disciplined. He would not hesitate to say things straight in the face.”

Not all remember him as such. Some analysts found his previously robust intellectual disposition in retreat and his articulation of governance matters became less critical and free-styled even when erosion of civil liberties and political freedoms worsened.
In fact, some less-than-charitable views about him reverberated from Mengo, the seat of the Buganda kingdom, where Nsibambi was long considered an insider and frontline defender.

One man who put his displeasure about the professor in black-and-white is current Buganda kingdom prime minister, Charles Peter Mayiga.
In Mayiga’s book, King on the Throne, he casts Nsibambi as an individual who supported the government’s controversial proposal for Mengo to have two councils; one of elected politicians and another of cultural leaders.

Nsibambi confutes that account. In his book titled, National Integration in Uganda (1962-2013), he accuses Mayiga of telling a lie.
“This statement by Mayiga was totally false and intended to portray me as having been displeased when President Museveni made a political settlement with Mengo, an essential approach of promoting good governance,” Nsibambi writes.

After Mayiga’s allegations, he notes that he sought for clarity from the kingdom premier but Mayiga replied that he had picked the statements from media reports.

“Owek Mayiga, that according to professional ethics, he should have verified his statement with me. We settled the matter amicably,” Nsibambi writes on Page 77.

Nsibambi’s disagreement with Mengo stemmed from the issue of the regional tier the central government broached and enacted against Buganda’s push for federo.

In November 2007, Nsibambi after a fundraising call to mobilise money for reconstruction of Mengo palace, wrote a letter to Mengo that he had, alongside President Museveni, donated Shs50m to the kingdom.

But on November 9, 2007, Mukono Municipality Member of Parliament Betty Nambooze mobilised people and the money was returned to Nsibambi.

The former prime minister, who often telephoned newsroom to complain about or correct reports about him he deemed inaccurate or likely to cast him in bad light, was at cross-roads.

Love for the kingdom
His love for his kingdom was being contested in ways unprecedented.
When those earthly challenges piled, Nsibambi drew strength from religion. He was a devout Anglican, with a reserved seat in the pews at St Paul’s Namirembe Catheral, the headquarters of Church of Uganda.
During a speak at his Bulange, a city suburb, President Museveni sent mourners into roaring laughter when he said he had been a guerilla; a bushman less bothered about God, and it was Prof Nsibambi who re-introduced him to the church.
That in years after milked a political dividend that obtains to-date.

Nsibambi’s father was a foremost godly soldier in the East African Revival Movement, whose powerful preaching widened the geographical reach and attraction of gospel to many.

Speaking about him, Namirembe diocese Bishop Kityo Luwalira said that “we need to celebrate the life of the late Nsibambi”.
“Luckily, he died having accepted Jesus. The family is at cross-roads, but with God, we will all overcome,” he said. He added that not only the family but the entire nation is at loss. “Each day we live on earth means nearing to going back to Christ,” the bishop added.
Nsibambi achieved a lot as a national figure, the prelate said, but his most enduring and humanly remarkable deed was a dedicated service to God.

A Christian at Kasero, in Buloba, acclaimed Nsibambi for helping in mobilising funds for church development.
Neighbours remember his other virtues.

In an interview, Lubaga Division Mayor, Ms Joyce Ssebugwawo, described Nsibambi as a good resident.
“Whenever we summoned community meetings in his area, Bulange, he would be one of the first people to attend even when he was premier. Such a disciplined character!” she said.

In Buloba on Mityana road, where he owned a large farm, residents only eulogise a good man with a large heart.
Ms Hedres Orikiriza, a teacher at Kabojja Junior, but a squatter on Nsibambi’s land at Buloba, said that the calmness and unassuming character late professor exhibited was rare and confounding.

“I became a squatter on his land and started to construct a house without his knowledge. He called me personally and advised me to get in touch with the land administrators,” Orikiriza said.

“I had thought such a powerful man would direct his guard to evict me,” Orikiriza said.
Feleskas Ngabo said they had shared a lot of moments together.
“During death or sickness he would help if he could. He has been so close to us. When he left government, I visited him to thank him for leaving with clean hands,” Ms Ngabo said.

Family
His brother, Dr John Nsibambi Kigozi, said following Nsibambi’s demise, he and a sister living abroad are now the only surviving of the original 12 children of their parents.

“I and my late brother Nsibambi did not want to die before the other. God has, however, taken him before me,” he said.
Apolo Nsibambi decided early that he should be laid to rest near his parents, at the family mausoleum, and the spot he picked means his body will lie between that of his late first wife, Rhoda, and widow, Esther.
He is survived by four children and, uncharacteristically in Baganda culture, Nsibambi, according to family sources, picked one of his daughters as heiress.

Nsibambi in quotes
MOB JUSTICE: There is general loss of trust in the judicial system and loss of confidence in the judicial officers and this is evidenced by the public taking the law into their own hands, resulting in episodes of mob action. We must establish causes of the problem and find a lasting solution.

2005 DONOR AID CUT: The reasons these people (donors) are giving are very weak. They talk of the independence of the judiciary, the press freedom, the transition process, who doesn’t know that the judiciary makes independent decisions and government abides by them?
SURVIVING CHOPPER CRASH IN BUGIRI: I became scared. We were almost on top of Bugiri hospital and in order for the pilot not to crash into the hospital; he chose to look for a plain ground. All of a sudden, part of the helicopter hit a tree. I felt like there was a burn; and I ran out of the plane. One of my shoes was off already……… We are lucky that it didn’t burn up or burn the hospital.
ASKS MUSEVENI TO QUIT: “He needs to name a successor such that things can move on well…such that he can advise as a grandparent.
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