Who are behind the highway robbers in military uniform?

A friend recently sent me two audio messages in which two people were recounting their narrow escape from armed highway robbers dressed in what looked like standard issue of the Uganda’s military.

 In the audios, the voice(s) warned people against travelling at night. In addition to the testimonies in the audio messages sent to me by my friend, other incidents similar to those described in the audios have been reported on almost all  routes leading to Kampala.

And then the murder of the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for Bukwo District happened. The CAO was travelling to Lira from Kampala at night. Along the way, he fell into what seemed to be a roadblock mounted by armed robbers attired in military fatigues. He was killed.

 Until police made some revelations about it, the death of the CAO had been treated as one of the cases of high robberies. The police say they are not treating the CAO’s case as that of highway robbery but a clean and clear case of murder (premeditated and aforethought). And for me, therein lies the nexus of interest in the recent spate of highway robberies particularised in the audio messages a friend sent me. My interest lies in the fact that well-orchestrated murders are likely to be coached in robbery.

 And if one were to stretch this farther, even insurgents could use the façade of ordinary highway robberies to purvey their evil. That is why the state should take more interest in the recent spate of highway armed robberies. When we were still interested in stuff of the kind, we found out that most of the cases of ritual human sacrifice were actually clean cases of murder. It just took a clever murderer to cut off the private parts of the victim to send the police investigations the wrong way.

 If the police want to regain the initiative (and her reputation), it will have to conclusively solve the murder case of the Bukwo District CAO. And if it were up to me, I would even look beyond the motive of the murder but at the challenges visited on CAOs by the political leadership of their respective districts.

 As we write this, we have it on strong authority that all district CAOs will attend the burial of their fallen colleague in Lira. On the one hand, they would like to use the funeral to reflect on the challenges  in their respective districts.

 The second reason is to celebrate subtle triumph over Dr Ramathan Ggoobi (the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and Secretary to the Treasury). He fired almost all CAOs a few days ago in what clearly looked like an administrative mishap. And perhaps after realising his untenable administrative action (blunder), he had called a meeting for all CAOs on Friday (yesterday). The CAOs are said to have pleaded with their ministry head+quarters over the ministry of Finance’s negative attitude towards them and called for a postponement of the meeting to next Friday.

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In the last quarter of 2019, Mr Museveni ordered Maj Gen Sabiiti Muzeeyi (then Deputy Inspector General of Police) to end the rising crime in the country. Ugandans, particularly residents of Kampala Metropolitan Area, were excited and hoped for Gen Elly Kayanja’s Operation Wembley kind of stuff of the early 2000s.

 In Kampala, every day returns cases of robbery (including those armed ones). May be Mr Museveni should once again tell the police to end robberies in Kampala again. Otherwise…!