From DP to FDC: Is Lukwago step closer to taking on Besigye’s mantle?

When the hastily organised Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) extraordinary delegates’ assembly was done, Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago was hoisted in the air by party diehards after he was declared interim president by a faction of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party.

It is now three years since Erias Lukwago left his childhood party, the Democratic Party (DP), where his card number was 11, given to him by then DP president general Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere. Lukwago joined FDC where he was handed 616,417 as his card number amid jubilation.  

It is also two years since he was elevated from being an ordinary FDC member to being FDC’s deputy president in charge of Buganda sub-region, a position which was given to him by way of appointment by party president (Najjanankumbi faction) Patrick Amuriat Oboi, who now, according to the faction that Lukwago leads, has been suspended by the FDC delegates.

“Patrick Amuriat was suspended, and a resolution was made that disciplinary procedures should ensue, and we are working towards its realisation. Thou shall not commit a wrong and go free,” Lukwago said at a press conference organised this week to ostensibly unleash plans he had for the party.

When Lukwago was appointed the party’s interim president, Amuriat said he regretted ever welcoming Lukwago into FDC, characterising him as “machinery” from Katonga – a street in Kampala where the Lukwago-led faction has its headquarters and it also hosts the offices of FDC founding president Kizza Besigye.

Amuriat wasn’t the only person at the receiving end of Lukwago’s jabs because Nathan Nandala Mafabi and Geoffrey Ekanya, who are now deemed by the Katonga faction as suspended as secretary general and treasurer respectively, had a fair share of those.

“We have the secretary general and the treasurer as signatories to the party accounts who are in suspension. As long as they remain in suspension, their signatures on those accounts cannot be valid,” Lukwago said. “If the banks honour any cheque signed by them in those capacities, we shall take them on legally.”

Yet Lukwago is not to intra-party grumblings as he witnessed the same in DP.

Lukwago was among the DP leaders who rejected the DP Mbale delegates’ conference of 2010 which resulted in Nobert Mao being voted as DP’s president general, having defeated Nasser Ntege Sebaggala, who has since passed on.

Lukwago, then DP’s legal advisor, rejected the Mbale delegates’ conference owing to the way Mathias Nsubuga, who has since passed on, had been controversially elected secretary general in 2008 during a spontaneous national council meeting that didn’t last more than one hour. 

Not many DP members attended the meeting, and those who did were informed on short notice by text message. 

After the Mbale delegates’ conference, Lukwago, who would win the Kampala Lord Mayoral position as an independent, and his colleagues such as Betty Nambooze (Mukono municipality), Lulume Bayigga (Buikwe South), Muhammad Muwanga Kivumbi (Butambala), Medard Lubega Sseggona (Busiiro East) and Mathias Mpuuga (Masaka Municipality, now Mukungwe-Nyendo) never warmed up to Mao’s leadership.

Indeed, in the 2011 presidential elections, in which Mao was DP’s presidential flagbearer, Lukwago and his colleagues supported FDC’s Besigye under Suubi 2011, a pressure group started to mobilise support for Opposition candidates in Buganda for the 2011 elections.

Lukwago would also be a key member of the Activists for Change (now called For God and My Country - 4GC), a pressure group agitating for economic and political reforms through civic action. 

Some of the members of this group said they were attracted to Besigye because he displayed the forcefulness that Mao lacked – the kind that is required to confront a regime such as the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).

Between 2011 and 2015, the expectation was that Lukwago and Mao were supposed to iron out issues they had, but this never happened. 

As parties like FDC were organising delegates’ conferences as they prepared to push President Museveni out of power, Lukwago made it clear that he wouldn’t participate in DP’s delegates’ conference that was hosted at Katomi Kingdom Resort Hotel, owned by former vice president Gilbert Bukenya.

Lukwago divergence from Mao was because of the way grassroots elections to pick delegates were conducted.

In parts of Buganda, Lukwago said, they were blemished by accusations of rigging, while in some areas, they did not take place at all, bringing into question the eligibility of some delegates.

Lukwago also wanted an independent committee to organise the delegates’ conference, not the Mao-led national executive committee, which he said was biased.

“The so-called grassroots elections were marred by violence and irregularities. No grassroots elections were conducted in Kampala since the DP independent national elections committee called them off. So, for me, I couldn’t have been a delegate in the national delegates’ conference since the Kampala delegates’ conference was not organised,” Lukwago told this writer at the time.

“So, I lost an opportunity to present myself to the delegates so that I could be voted to go to the national delegates’ conference. And there was no way I would have been in Katomi [kingdom hotel for the delegates’ conference] like Prof Gilbert Bukenya, or Gen David Sejusa [as mere observers].”

Lukwago, together with Samuel Lubega Mukaaku and Latif Ssebaggala, formed a pressure group they dubbed Truth and Justice (TJ).

“We are going to be very many and we  are going to show you people who are going to vie for different positions. Our aim is to take power with or without Norbert Mao,” Lukwago said. 

Lukwago, who still supported Besigye’s presidential bid yet DP supported Amama Mbabazi’s, retained his lord mayoral seat after garnering 75.5 percent of the vote which was an increment from the 64.4 percent of the 2011 elections.

Though he had made it clear that he would never abandon DP, citing his life membership card he had got in 2004, in 2020 it seemed that Lukwago had had enough of the un-ending fights with Mao.  

Lukwago’s decision to join FDC wasn’t surprising since he had allied with the party and particularly Besigye’s ‘People’s Government’ where he was deputy president. 

No wonder Mao scorned at the move, saying they were making the marriage official. “It’s a great day when a person who has been cohabitating finally gets married,” Mao said. 

Many of Lukwago’s former allies; Nambooze, Sseggona, Muwanga-Kivumbi, and Mpuuga, among others, joined the National Unity platform (NUP), led by Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine. 

Lukwago chose to join FDC saying he had followed his heart and chosen FDC where he said he would be able to cement a bond with a team of patriotic, charismatic leaders who he said over the years have had been in the struggle to create political sanity in Uganda in order to build a free, prosperous and just society.

FDC firebrands Mafabi, Amuriat, Wasswa Birigwa, Reagan Okumu (Former Aswa County MP), and Cecilia Ogwal (Dokolo Woman MP), cheered on as Lukwago declared at FDC headquarters that he wasn’t joining the party as a way of scheming.

At the time Mao had castigated politicians who had left DP and joined NUP as “meal card” politicians, but Lukwago said he was not that type.

“I have not come to FDC as a fortune hunter looking for freebies, groceries, or what in political parlance is known as a meal card…Personally, I abhor the culture of meal card politics, which is quite pervasive in our party politics. With all due respect to whoever might be offended by my remarks, I always cringe at the sight of a political leader roaming around with a party ticket as an ATM card and such elements shouldn’t be tolerated by any serious political party,” Lukwago said.  

“I’m not here for self-aggrandizement, I want to stress that. My decision has not been informed by my desire to come here for anything material. No. I know for sure that the vast majority of you and other right-thinking members of this country will attest to the fact that I have no centre or iota of political scheming within my DNA. You know that. Anyone can get the Bible, can get the Quran and testify to that fact.” 

As soon as Lukwago officially joined FDC, Besigye made it clear that he would endorse his presidential candidature if one day Lukwago took a shot at the biggest position in the country. 

“Erias Lukwago has consistently fought for a common person. I can tell you without any fear of contradiction that Erias Lukwago can make a good president of this country. I would vote for him. Even if FDC chose him as a candidate, he would not be found wanting,” Besigye, who has been incarcerated with Lukwago in different cells as they engage in political activism, told NTV’s political show On The Spot.

Besigye said what he likes about Lukwago is the consistency and clarity of his political pursuits. The four-time presidential candidate lionised Lukwago, saying the Kampala Lord Mayor, who on his Facebook profile says he “strongly believes in the rule of law and constitutionalism” has clarity on what the struggle is and is committed overwhelmingly to it. 

Though Lukwago passes Besigye’s test, some party members who belong to the Najjanankumbi faction, regret welcoming the Lord Mayor to FDC.

“I am going to advise that when we recruit new members, we orient them on the values of the party. We took on Erias Lukwago without considering the issues he was having at KCCA and those he had in DP,” Robert Centenary, former Kasese Municipality MP, said.

When he was joining FDC, Lukwago said one of the reasons that compelled him to join the political party was because it was a step ahead of the rest in how it had built inter-party democracy over the years. 

He said all positions in the party are contested fairly by all members, no matter the seniority or age, but he now says the elections that Amuriat’s faction has organised have soiled the reputation of the party. 

“FDC used to have very clean elections. Very spotless, but everyone knows how Amuriat and his group have done now,” Lukwago said, promising to organise better elections.