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Gilbert Bwana: Dr Besigye’s tormentor turns police ‘outcast’
Arinaitwe drags Dr Besigye to a police pick-up truck after spraying him with pepper spray and forcing him out of his car in 2011.
What you need to know:
Sidelined? Ever since his infamous assault on Dr Kizza Besigye in 2011, Gilbert Bwana Arinaitwe appears to have been sidelined. Several officers who he joined the police with in 2007 have been promoted except him
KAMPALA.
On November 9, 2014, Gilbert Bwana Arinaitwe, clad in police uniform bearing his Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) pips, charmed the congregation of worshippers with a song during praise time at Saint Paul’s Cathedral Namirembe.
Backed by a police choir, Bwana started the praise with Wii polo bot Lubanga, a song by Pastor George Okudi, and danced around the pulpit.
“Did you find them dancing in the house of the Lord?” ASP Bwana sang and the group chorused: “Yes, I found them dancing in the house of the Lord.”
Arinaitwe sings with a choir during a police thanksgiving service at Saint Paul’s Cathedral Namirembe in 2014.
Bwana sang like he was possessed by the Holy Spirit. His bosses and other members of the congregation sprang off their seats and joined him in the singing and dancing.
Ms Grace Akullo, the Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Directorate (CIID) director and Mr Richard Edyegu, the deputy director of police logistics and engineering were some of the senior police officers who joined Bwana.
That is one side of Bwana. The flipside of Bwana, however, is his seething hot temper which has turned him into an undesirable human being.
Gilbert Bwana Arinaitwe uses the butt of his pistol to smash a window of Dr Kizza Besigye’s car in Kampala in 2011. MONITOR PHOTOS
On April 28, 2011 at Mulago roundabout, Bwana pulled out his pistol and crashed Dr Kizza Besigye’s vehicle window glass into pieces. He was not yet done with his temper. He unleashed pepper spray into Dr Besigye’s eyes and dragged him out of the vehicle. The pepper nearly made Besigye blind.
Bwana roughed him up and bundled him into a police pick-up truck like a street thief. The images of the attack were so grim that no senior police officer could come out to defend them.
Although Bwana was not charged in court or reprimanded in the police disciplinary court, his superiors did not take his conduct lightly.
After the Mulago roundabout incident, Bwana lost some of his freedom. Besigye’s sympathisers were angry at what he had done and wanted to avenge.
His colleagues say police gave him guards but as time passed, he could not afford to accommodate them since he was still renting a house.
Guards needed facilitation which he could not raise from his meagre salary of around Shs480,000 a month.
Problems come in droves, it is often said. As Bwana was struggling to keep afloat, on May 6, 2011, his wife Beatrice Nagawa bore him twins. His earnings were stretched to the limit and he could not live within his income.
Seeing his life in danger without guards, the police management transferred Bwana to Masindi Police Training School to “hide” him away from angry city dwellers for a while. They say time heals.
In November 2011, while he was still in “hiding”, police promoted nearly all assistants superintendent of police of the 2007 intake, the year Bwana joined police, to the ranks of superintendent and above except him and a few others with indiscipline cases.
Officers in his 2007 intake, such as Mr Frank Mwesigwa (now Masindi Police Training School commandant) and Mr Anatoli Muteterwa (Kampala Metropolitan Police Liaison officer), were moved a rank or two above.
After a singing tour with the police choir from one church to another during the celebration of 100 years of the Uganda Police Force last year, most of the officers who joined the Force at the same time with him were promoted again. All he walked away with, again, was his spiritual empowerment.
Police spokesperson Fred Enanga, when asked why they have not promoted Bwana eight years down the road, said police promotions are done depending on an officer’s record. “I haven’t seen his file so I can’t tell why he hasn’t been promoted unless I get information from the police administration directorate,” Mr Enanga said.
Promotions come with an increment in pay, and often with power. As his colleagues were busy looking for plots to buy and construct their own houses for their families, Bwana was pleading with a friend to keep his family until he stabilised financially.
The family burden exploded on him. His wife sought refuge elsewhere and she and Bwana are now living separate lives.
“Upon my transfer to Masindi Police Barracks, I with the respondent’s consent, temporarily resettled the family at Wakaliga, where they were staying with a family friend, Pastor Arthur Nsamba, as I tried to get a house for the family,” Bwana said in his affidavit in court.
Ms Nagawa in her affidavit said she had no option but to move to Bwana’s mother’s home.
Arinaitwe and his wife Beatrice Nagawa on their wedding day.
When the situation in Kampala and its suburb normalised, Bwana came back to his mother’s home. Bwana’s mother had to host his graduate son, her daughter-in-law and the grandchildren – the twins.
In many African cultures, a married man is not expected to return to live at his parents’ home.
Bwana, according to the wife’s affidavit in court, started assaulting her from his mother’s home. Bwana denied assaulting her but only says they had a quarrel.
Ms Nagawa said “consequently the marriage broke down due to the environment I was subjected to with the children and I moved back to my parents’ home in Nsangi with the children for their welfare”.
Eight months after the attack on Besigye, the couple had developed irreconcilable differences. Bwana said he secured a house in Madirisa Zone in Makindye in January 2012.
“I requested the respondent (Nagawa) to come with the children and reside there but she refused to come,” he said in the affidavit.
As he battled to keep his disintegrating family together, his superiors were also distancing themselves from him. No head of any police command wanted to take him up.
The year 2012 was as bad as 2011. The story did not change.
Without deployment or office, Bwana was left to depend on only his Shs532,160 monthly salary yet he had to pay rent in an area where monthly rent ranged between Shs200,000 and Shs500,000.
He made several visits to Kampala Metropolitan Police commander Felix Kaweesi to seek assistance but to no avail. A police source close to Mr Kaweesi said he was always evasive.
He also sought appointment with the ClID boss, Ms Akullo, whom he is supposed to report to, but did not get much help.
“…For the last two years I have resided in Zzana (on Entebbe Road) as I await deployment by the Uganda Police Force,” Bwana said later in September 2014.
In November 2013, Ms Nagawa said she was asked by Bwana’s mother to take the twins to her home in Namugongo for a visit. “I obliged but to my surprise, upon Arinaitwe’s arrival, he beat me up in the presence of my children, his mother and the housemaids,” Ms Nagawa told court.
In a police statement made on 17 November 2013, Ms Nagawa said she was physically assaulted by Bwana and her mother-in-law and other in-laws rescued her.
“I was not able to come to report because I was fearing for my life since my attacker was armed as usual with a revolver. We locked ourselves in one of the rooms of the mother’s house with my children until he left,” she said in a police statement.
A police medical examination done on Ms Nagawa the next day shows tenderness on her left face.
Probation officers tried to fix the failing marriage to no avail. Liberty Worship Centre senior pastor Imelda Namutebi, could not help either.
Bwana’s marital woes spread like wild fire among faithful of the Miracle Centre churches, where he often coordinated security matters. He was relegated to back stage church duties.
Ms Nagawa eventually limited Bwana’s access to the children, saying he should only visit them “under a watchful eye of a security personnel”.
Court case
Having failed due to lack of consensus by the two parties, the case went to Family and Children’s Court at Mwanga II.
In May 2015, the Senior Principal Magistrate Grade I, Mr Emmy Geoffrey Sayekwo, of Mwanga II Court ruled that considering the age of the said children, the mother is the fit and proper person to maintain them.
Now police has sent him for more training with a hope that he turns around his life beyond his love for gospel music.
Efforts to reach Bwana on his known phone contact in the last two weeks were futile, indicating that perhaps he had already left for his training. However, earlier in 2013 when Sunday Monitor met him, he said he was willing to give his side of the story if the Inspector General of Police approved the press interview.
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