Mr Jimmy Akena (right) receives a medal on behalf of his father Milton Obote from President Museveni in 2010. PHOTOS/ FILE
The indefinite incarceration of Dr Kizza Besigye has forced Uganda’s biggest Opposition party, National Unity Platform (NUP), to galvanise Opposition parties around the cause of pressuring the government to release political prisoners. DM bodytext: While it’s common to see Opposition figures such as Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago and Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) leader Mugisha Muntu collaborating with NUP honchos, it was quite novel to see Mr Jimmy Akena, who heads one of the factions of Uganda People Congress (UPC), in such meetings.
Akena hasn’t just been attending these meetings in passive form but he has been making cases for a strong pushback against the National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime led by President Museveni, including supporting Besigye’s hunger strike, which was his response to being tried in the General Court Martial (GCM) in violation of the Supreme Court judgement.
“I feel that the option available and the option that has been taken up by Dr Kizza Besigye is a real option for any of us who may find ourselves incarcerated for whatever reason,” Akena said last month. “It makes sense to use whatever tool is available. On that basis, I agree with the actions he has taken. Today it might be Besigye, tomorrow it might be Akena facing the same situation.”
As if that wasn’t enough in a mark of redemption, last weekend Akena upped his rhetoric against the regime when he declared in the eastern district of Kalaki that he is ready to do everything within his might, even if it costs his life, to see that he ends Museveni’s decades-long hold onto power.
“There must come a point when we say enough is enough. For me, I have crossed the point where I have said that I have had enough,” Akena said. He went ahead to once again invoke Besigye, who has challenged Museveni’s hold onto power since 1999 and is now facing treason charges.
“I have made it clear that I’m making a difference in this country of ours and whatever they do to me, whether it is tear gas or whether they want to put me with Kizza [Besigye] in jail. I’m not going to turn back,” Akena said.
This was an extension of the statement of intent Akena made on March 1 during his tour of the eastern town of Kaberamaido that 2026 won’t be business as usual.
“I want to give NRM a warning. It’s not going to be business as usual. You have somebody who is challenging and who understands politics better than you think,” Akena said.
For the Opposition, it might be hard to reconcile Akena’s latest anti-regime rhetoric and a person whom they have for years labelled as a beneficiary of the regime, if not an extension of Museveni’s regime.
"Akena cannot claim to be in Opposition while his wife is a minister in the NRM government. They stand together," Mr Joab Businge, the Masindi Municipality Member of Parliament, who belongs to the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), said last year, alluding to Akena’s wife Betty Amongi, who is the minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development.
For a long time, Akena had been seen as a regime lackey, triggering off more factions within one of the oldest political parties in Uganda. But his marriage with NRM was made official before the 2016 General Election when he signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with NRM.
Akena agreed not to stand for the presidency, and in return, the NRM didn’t harass him in his Lira Municipality seat (now Lira East).
“Most of you have not understood what this is about. This is political pragmatism. You may choose to believe what others are saying, but you need to know what this is about,” Akena said when Museveni appointed Amongi, also Oyam South MP, as minister for Lands, Housing, and Urban Development, and during this term, she has been appointed minister of Gender.
In explaining the deal with the NRM, Akena said it would enable UPC to operate as a political party without being stopped by police, which at the time was led by Gen Kale Kayihura.
“The most important thing is that if the party can operate, then we have no problem. You see, if we are in an alliance, it will be hard for Gen Kayihura to teargas our rallies...that is the arrangement. We can field candidates, and more members will now be in a position to stand since the ruling party, which was the opponent, will be an ally,” he said.
Lira municipalty MP Jimmy Akena swearing in as UPC party president at Lugogo UMA Conference Hall, Kampala on Wednesday. Photo by Rachel Mabala
Still, before the 2016 elections, Akena’s faction announced that it wouldn’t field a presidential candidate, with the MP offering that the Opposition needs to get their priorities right and invest in the right places instead of going into elections for the sake of it.
For the 2021 elections, Mr Akena said, he would retain his Lira East Municipality parliamentary seat and strengthen the party’s grassroots structures for it to be able to work on increasing its representation in local governments and Parliament.
In broadening divisions within Akena continued to attend Interparty Organisation for Dialogue (Ipod) meetings – sometimes hosted at the behest of Museveni – a move that annoyed other Opposition parties such as NUP and FDC which rallied the Opposition to ignore the meetings on account that nothing productive can come out of them besides legitimising the NRM.
Ipod was formed with a view of bringing all political parties with representation in Parliament to one table to discuss political issues, but it has proved to be divisive within the Opposition.
Though Akena’s wing cooperated with NRM for years, it seems their collaboration ran into headwinds when the ruling party didn’t support UPC’s candidate for the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) in 2022.
As the pattern had been, Akena’s faction had fronted Fred Ebil, who they expected would take up one of the seats, with the support of the NRM, that are ring-fenced for the Opposition.
Per an agreement that the NRM signed, Democratic Party’s (DP) secretary general Gerald Siranda scoped one of the two positions.
Still, Ebil lost, with the ruling party, which has an overwhelming majority in Parliament, choosing to support
their candidate.
Though Akena had claimed that they had a written understanding with the NRM, the results from the Eala election forced the faction to change the narrative, saying what had been violated was “a gentleman’s agreement.”
Still, Ebil lost, with the ruling party, which has an overwhelming majority in Parliament, choosing to support their candidate.
Though Akena had claimed that they had a written understanding with the NRM, the results from the Eala elections forced the faction to change the narrative, saying what had been violated was “a gentleman’s agreement”.
“Whereas we don’t have any written agreement between us, we trusted them and took their word when they said our candidate was going to win the Eala elections,” Mr Dennis Enap, Akena faction’s legal advisor, said.
“They have breached trust, and we cannot trust them again. We disassociate with the NRM going forward.”
As the 2026 elections take shape, the NRM had expected Amongi to officially ditch UPC and formalise her relationship with NRM but following the rapture in the relationship, Akena’s wife has since declared that she will stick to UPC, which she will use to challenge the Minister for Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng’s firm grip on Lira City Woman constituency.
Akena has since also declared that he intends to challenge for presidency, and this might pose questions for Museveni’s calculations in northern Uganda.
After losing Buganda to NUP’s Robert Kyagulanyi, Museveni had counted to make up that loss by shading the entire northern Uganda yellow.
Museveni was successful with that calculation and he specifically won all nine districts found in the Lango Sub-region where loyalty to Akena is due to the history of his father Apollo Milton Obote who ruled Uganda twice.
Mr Jimmy Akena (second right) joins other Opposition leaders at the NUP party headquarters in Kampala last month
Interestingly, in his recent assault on Museveni’s regime, Akena has invoked his father.
“My only prayer to God is to see a day where Uganda succeeds before I die. I’m not afraid to go and see my father. Both fathers: Father in heaven (God) and father (Obote). I don’t have fear of going,” Akena said.
Akena’s electoral viability in the Lango Sub-region can’t be taken lightly because, in this term, his faction has won two by-elections – the Dokolo Woman MP slot and Oyam North.
Even when Museveni was campaigning for Ms Janet Adongo Rose Elau, the NRM candidate who wanted to replace FDC’s Cecilia Ogwal for the Dokolo Woman MP slot last year, it wasn’t lost on him that he was in the UPC turf. Ogwal had represented Dokolo on the FDC ticket since 2006 after she had decamped from UPC.
Museveni narrated his story of first being a Democratic Party (DP) member before joining UPC.
“By 1965, through the student movement, we started to say, ‘We should have politics of what people need, not who they are’. By 1970, I had finished but because of the new thinking, ‘Don’t look at people for who they are but what they need’, I talked to my elder Mzee [Boniface] Byanyima, our elder of DP in Ankole. I said, ‘Why don’t you join UPC?” Museveni said.
Byanyima’s response, Museveni said, was that he couldn’t join UPC because they were “thieves”.
But the President – who has been in power since 1986 – said he pressed on to join Obote’s political party.
“In September 1970, I went to their [UPC] office along Entebbe road and there was a man called Otim Oryem. So, I joined UPC and met Obote and I said, ‘We have been in DP but I have come to support you. So that we develop our country and we bring peace,” Museveni said.
Museveni made it clear that despite differences with Obote, he thought he was better than Idi Amin, and that’s why he has always worked with UPC.
“When I hear people like here in Dokolo, that there are people who are UPC who don’t want to work with the NRM. They are still there… They are still… Why don’t you join the medicine that seems to have worked because this medicine of NRM seems to have worked?” Museveni said.
Museveni’s fears came to pass as UPC candidate Sarah Aguti Nyangkori won the Dokolo by-election, having garnered 23,044 votes, with NRM‘s Elau coming second with 14,001 votes and Dr Austin Rosemary Alwoc, Ogwal’s daughter, who had stood on FDC ticket, coming distant third with 8,168 votes.
It wasn’t the first time that UPC, which has long been considered to be inconsequential to Uganda politics, won a by-election in this term that has been organised in the Lango Sub-region.
In 2023, UPC’s Eunice Apio Otuko edged the NRM’s Samuel Engola Okello for the Oyam North MP slot that became vacant after the killing of Charles Okello Engola.
This particular by-election saw tempers go through the roof, with footage showing Akena accusing NRM’s electoral commission boss Tanga Odoi of stealing.
“You are stealing,” Akena was heard telling Dr Odoi, who responded, “You are losing.”
UPC winning these two by-elections had the effect of strengthening Akena’s claim of being the legitimate leader of the political party, which has been plagued by factions since time immemorial.
In 1966, Obote – Akena’s father – managed to remain in control of UPC after outwitting opponents within the party led by Grace Ibingira.
Obote’s misunderstandings with Ibingira were deemed, at least on the face of it, to be ideological, with Ibingira accusing Obote of dragging the party to the left (communism), something that annoyed the West.
Ibingira wanted to take UPC and the country in a different direction – the right – and assured the West that Obote would be ousted in no time.
Akena has been struggling to hold onto UPC’s leadership ever since High Court judge Yasin Nyanzi, who has since retired, ruled that the 2015 delegates’ conference that ushered his leadership was illegal as it violated not only the Constitution of Uganda’s second oldest party but also the Constitution of Uganda.
Now Akena feels emboldened to challenge the government that gave his wife a job.
“The change has to come. The change will benefit the citizens of Uganda. As far as I’m concerned, we have had enough. I pray to God this suffering ends, but I need all of us to move together for a better future,” Akena said.
