A woman’s painful search for her missing husband

Florence Nasozi, aka Aisha, 26, was watching television with her children shortly after midnight on August 13, when someone banged hard on her door. She pushed the curtain of her living room window and saw a man outside, who demanded she opens the door. She refused.  

The man introduced himself as the local defence secretary, and demanded that she opens the door to her house so they could ‘talk’. She didn’t recognise him. Again she refused to open. 

It is at the man’s insistence for her to open that she decided to go into their bedroom and wake up her husband, Baker Lubega, who was sleeping. Like his wife, Lubega, in his 30s, refused to open the door and asked the man, who had now been joined by several others, to call his neighbours so they could witness the conversation the men intended to have with him and his wife. They refused and so he picked his phone and tried to reach out to his neighbours. This angered the men and they tried to break the door. He relented and opened. 

The ‘kidnappers’
Nasozi says she was able to see seven men, who demanded that she brings clothes for her husband so he could get dressed. She complied. One of the men, she recalls, was dressed in a khaki police uniform, another was dressed in the police Field Force Unit (FFU) uniform. The third was donning a Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) uniform, while the remaining four were in civilian attire.

Once he was dressed, the men, without giving any reason, handcuffed him and proceeded to take him. Before they left, they ordered them to surrender their phones, which they took. She was told that she should go and report to Katwe Police Station, where her husband was to be detained.  She tried to follow them but one of the men picked a huge log and escorted her back to the house and waited for her to lock the door. 

A guard working nearby says the men were travelling in a white Toyota Noah in which they bundled Lubega before speeding off. 

For close to 20 days now, Nasozi has been searching for her husband in vain. She says the police and local authorities have shown little interest in helping her and in some cases frustrated her search. Since the incident, her husband’s family have only managed an announcement on one of the local radio stations in attempts to draw attention to his case. 

On the morning of August 14, Nasozi proceeded to Katwe Police Station and she was informed that no person of her husband’s details had been booked at the station, or was under investigation by the authorities at the station.

She also combed the nearby police stations in Ndeba, Konoweka, Kikajjo and Lubugumu. The police authorities did not have any records of her husband. While at Mirimu Police Station at Konoweka, Ndejje Zanta, the authorities phoned their colleagues at Kibiri Police but she was told he was not there. After four days of a fruitless search, she was advised to file a case [of a missing person], which she did at Mirimu Police station. She also tried to call her phone and that of her husband but both had been switched off since the unidentified men took them. 

Lubega’s father, a resident of Katwe, and his mother, a resident of Nakilebe, Masaka, have also tried to look for him in vain. His mother was told to check at Mbuya military barracks in Kampala but the army authorities there told her they do not detain civilians at the facility, and that they did not have her son. The mother also tried Special Investigations Unit at Kireka, Wakiso District, but he was not there. 

“I have been supporting the family but I am helpless now and I have spent all the money from my small business,” Nasozi says. 

“I appeal to anyone who can help me to search for my husband. I hear there are human rights group that can ask powerful people questions. I am now the mother and father to my children. What can I do? I appeal to whoever can help,” Nasozi says as she fights to hold back tears. 

She operates a small stall less than a kilometre away from Makindye Ssabagabo Municipal headquarters, where she sells tomatoes, matooke and charcoal. It is from this stall that she has been raising transport fees to move around in search of her husband and to feed her four children aged four months, two, four and five years. 

“I can’t sleep at night. I don’t know what next because I have not received any help,” she says. 
The police have never visited her home or interviewed the neighbours, which makes her believe there is something the authorities are not telling her. 

Beyond a reference number, SDREF06/19/08/2021, Nasozi has not received any formal documentation of her husband’s case from the police, who also reportedly confiscated the letter she had received from her village local council authorities.  

Who is Lubega?
Lubega is a boda boda rider, who sometimes worked as a welder. He was not involved in politics, according to several people interviewed. Neighbours we spoke to say he often returned home by 5pm and did not engage much with the community beyond going to the nearby mosque, sometimes, for prayers. Nasozi says he mostly prayed from home. 

Police spokesperson Fred Enanga, in an interview with Daily Monitor, advised Lubega’s family to escalate the situation for further handling. 

“The file needs to be moved to a higher level for further handling. If there is an operation carried out in the area, the local authorities and police must be notified. From the statement which she made, further inquiries can be made,” he said. 

The situation
Uganda has been gripped with cases of forced disappearances, killings, abductions, arbitrary arrests and kidnappings, which worsened during and after the recently concluded general elections. 

Security forces, including the police and the military, have been implicated in most of the cases. Some of the victims never made it home alive. 

Beyond the legalese, there is a human story behind every disappearance, according to Amnesty International.  People literally disappear from their loved ones and their communities, when state officials (or someone acting with state consent) grabs them from the streets or from their homes and then deny it, or refuse to say where they are. It is a crime under international law.

An forced disappearance, Amnesty International says, is frequently used as a strategy to spread terror within society. The feeling of insecurity and fear it generates is not limited to the close relatives of the victims, but also affects communities and society as a whole.