Dr Alfred James Obita (seated) with his daughter Vicky Ogik (left) and her husband Rwot Ogik at their home in Kitgum. PHOTO/COURTESY/ DUSMAN OKEE
After surviving an attempted kidnap near his office, Dr Alfred James Obita hatched another escape through Entebbe airport VIP lounge.
On a Sunday morning, Obita, in company of his lawyer, Ambassador Hassan Othieno, set off straight for Entebbe airport.
“I was already known in the VIP lounge since the days of Tito Okello, so it was easy access for me,” he says. “However, a movie kind of event began unfolding when I handed my passport in for check-in. A few minutes later, a soldier in uniform came and told me the airport security commandant wanted to talk to me. As soon as I reached him, he told me he had orders not to allow me out of the airport,” Obita says. Obita remembers shouting at the top of his voice, saying, “kill me if you want but I have to go.” The commandant made a few phone calls and after cleared Obita to board a Uganda Airlines flight out of Entebbe.
“But at the boarding gate, upon checking my luggage, I was found with $10,000 (about Shs36m today) and told I was not allowed to take out any dollars. They confiscated it and gave me a receipt for it,” Obita narrates, bursting into laughter while recalling what he says is the most ironic receipt of his life.
Ironic because Obita believes he was robbed and given a receipt for it. And more misery was to come. Shortly before the aircraft’s door was closed, a soldier gained entry into the aircraft. He was running and waving a pistol. The soldier put the firearm on Obita’s head, ordering him to disembark. With the passengers scampering, Obita told the soldier that he was only getting off the plane as a corpse. Fortunately for Obita, the pilot was a husband of his secretary and had fair knowledge of what was going on. Consequently, the pilot and the entire cabin crew ordered the soldier off the plane.
They warned that if he didn’t comply, he would be flown to Kenya as a hijacker. The soldier was then kicked off the plane, much to the applause of all passengers. “Once again, I was sweating profusely, with passengers wondering who I could be,” Obita says. In Nairobi, Kenya, Obita was received by friends and later registered officially with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a refugee with a status quo passport. While there, he would join other Acholi in the Kenyan capital. The 1995 Atiak massacre and the 1997 killing of 400 civilians in Kitgum in the span of four days infuriated these community. Despite this, many still believed Joseph Kony was the messiah who would avenge the atrocities by upstaging President Museveni. To the wounded Obita, the Museveni government was jam-packed with outright robbers.
He was consequently convinced while in the Kenyan capital that it was in everyone's best interests that the regime be uprooted. The Acholi community in Nairobi also fronted Obita as a leader. The community thought Obita would give intellectual guidance to the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an extremist organisation that Kony founded in 1987. Through some “contacts” in Nairobi, Kony is said to have been happy with this development and an arrangement was made for Obita to meet him in the Jebeleng-Garamba forest. This was in 1993. After a few weeks of arrangements, Obita was airlifted to Juba under special arrangement by the Sudan government. When he touched down, Obita was taken to a “safe house”, awaiting briefings and orders from “above.” On the third day in Juba, an agent picked him and they headed to a secret airfield where an Antonov cargo plane was waiting.
The flight would prove to be epic. “The plane looked like a long tube and was loaded with all sorts of bombs, fuel drums and coffin boxes. Midair, the plane began to sputter. I did not fear because the few aboard looked unbothered. It was at Juba airport that hell broke loose,” Obita recalls, before switching to the present tense to add: “The plane does not descend. From the highest feet, it just drops to avoid anti-aircraft hits from the then SPLA [Sudan People's Liberation Army]. It’s not fun. The drop leaves your whole body up in the air and the little heart starts puking on touching down.” Obita could only manage a smile when he disembarked.
He almost immediately met Otti Lagony, one of the top LRA commanders, who would years later die on the battlefield. When Obita met Lagony after the eventful flight to Juba, the pair was meeting for only the second time after a previous encounter in Kitgum. Driving a Land Rover mounted with a machine gun and two escorts, Lagony informed Obita that he was assigned as his mentor. Lagony then drove Obita to Jebeleng, 30 to 40 kilometres a way from Juba. Jebeleng is where Kony stayed. This was in a camp/village with more than 8,000 people and families engaged in agriculture.
Meeting Kony That same evening, Obita finally got to meet Kony at his house. In a welcome Obita describes as warm and genuine, the rebel leader was in the presence of his special aide Komakech Omona. Obita describes Omona as very bright, educated and highly focused. During the meeting, Kony always made fun of Obita. He, for instance, referred to Obita as Bit-Bit, alluding to his defunct company. In attendance was Lagony, Vincent Otti, and a fine artist only referred to as Kaggwa. The artist’s work was to accurately draw the face of anybody Kony had interest in. Kaggwa would be sent on reconnaissance missions to draw faces of targets. Otti was a top LRA commander believed to have been killed at the behest of Kony in 2007.
This was two years after the International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued a warrant for his arrest With the instruments of power verbally relayed to go and lead the external wing, Obita returned to Nairobi the same way. He would later start the external wing for mobilisation and support when he relocated to Sweden. In the face-to-face talk, Obita told Kony, firstly, to stop killing his own people, and, secondly, not to use landmines, which would put Acholi land out of production. Many weeks after his return, international media denied Obita an audience until one day when Shaka Ssali (RIP) used his Voice of America (VOA) platform to grant him one. The presentation later attracted Robin White of the BBC to invite him to London for another interview and interaction with the public media. His mobilisation and popularisation of the LRA externally had begun in earnest.
Obita says while in London, he was given a Thuraya satellite phone by “friends” to enable Kony to access him at will. This was together with a small network of around seven people. Obita’s woes and fallout with Kony, however, started to manifest when someone told Kony that the external wing was preparing to overthrow him. This was something that Kony had warned him against during their earlier encounter.
“First, when I went back to Nairobi to renew my refugee passport/special pass. The immigration in Kenya confiscated it, and said I was to be extradited to Uganda to answer criminal charges. After a long standoff, I reached an ‘understanding’ with the officials that if I raised $30,000 (about Shs107m), they could let me leave Kenya, but it had to be that same night. Through ‘friends’ $30,000 was immediately raised and that same night, I left for London,” he recalls.
“In one of the meetings back in London, a mole recorded all the proceedings in which I made it clear that LRA should only work on the military and stop interfering in the political wing. I also criticised the continued killing of innocent people, use of landmines and strongly emphasised that peace talks are the only way to stop people’s suffering in northern Uganda. Peace talks could be defended in front of the world and supported too,” he adds. It was also alleged that Obita was given $300m (Shs1 trillion) to betray the LRA.
“The audio and the fabricated story were immediately delivered to Kony through Khartoum. This infuriated Kony so much. It ought to be known that Khartoum was totally against peace talks and anybody promoting these talks, including Riak Macher, began to be viewed as an enemy of Sudan,” Obita says, adding: “LRA was a buffer against SPLA, as well as the Ugandan government said to back it.”
With a fallout with Kony beckoning, Obita was compelled to go to Garamba to clear his name. Despite all the warnings from friends and those who had worked with Kony, that he would never come out alive, Obita was determined to go. Khartoum offered all the logistics for this trip, knowing this was a golden opportunity to have Obita eliminated.
Using the same channels as before, Obita arrived in Jebeleng-Garamba. Only this time it was to a sombre mood. Kony did not want to see or talk to him. In fact, for the next two days, the LRA high command were debating his fate. The verdict was reached on the third day. Public execution by firing squad. Read about Obita’s fate in the final instalment of the series in the Sunday Monitor tomorrow.
