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
With Dr Alfred James Obita safe and sound in Nairobi, Kenya, he used the Ksh400,000 (about Shs11m today) from the coffee smugglers who bought his coffee certificate of origin to rent an apartment in the affluent Buruburu estate for a year.
During this period, World Vision advertised scholarship packages to the New South Wales Masters and PhD students in Australia.
Obita seized this opportunity and applied. He was admitted to a three-year PhD course in industrial Chemistry.
While studying, Obita was given a vacancy at the third biggest beer brewery in Australia called Tooth. While there, he formulated and developed beer brands like KB larger, which sold across the world, especially the United States. With this development and impression, Tooth tripled his pay and offered to get him citizenship in Australia, which he outrightly declined.
Of the five Ugandans who were admitted to this university, it was only him who preferred to come back to Uganda after the overthrow of Idi Amin. With the money accumulated in Australia, Obita came back to Uganda with some music equipment and set up a modern discotheque at Impala House, next to the American Embassy. He called it Chezz Johnson.
The proximity to the American embassy gave him the advantage of security since most of his clients were of the high-end type, the likes of diplomats, CEOs, high-level government officials, and the topnotch spenders in Kampala.
To keep in the academic world, Obita also took up lecturing at Makerere University’s Chemistry Department. He worked in tow with Prof John Ssebuwufu, who, decades later, would become the university’s vice chancellor.
Hitting the jackpot
Obita says the club grew in leaps and bounds to the extent that minibuses were acquired to ferry girls from Makerere University and Mulago School of Nursing. The girls’ presence was intended to spice things up at the club. It is from this venture that Obita made so much money. On average, he would bank Shs3m to Shs4m per week.
In 1983, Foods and Beverages, the only company capable of big imports at the time, approached Obita and convinced him to enter a sugar importation business. This was in a bid to help address the sugar scarcity problem that Uganda was grappling with. This business required at least $1.5m (about Shs5.3b today).
To be able to access a letter of credit to the would-be supplier in Europe, Obita formed a company called Bit-Bit Uganda Ltd. He then solicited the help of Opika Opoka, who had Kitgum House as the jewel in the crown. Obita wanted to use the aforesaid jewel as bank security to secure the money needed.
With Opoka hesitant, Obita approached Tito Okello, the then Head of State, whom he had known during his time in Kitgum. The President convinced Opoka to do the needful since the country was in dire need of sugar.
Obita also got a mortgage from other companies, with his longtime acquaintance Lalonyo, a Kampala-based tycoon, who hailed from Kitgum, offering him $100,000 (Shs357m).
Trouble in paradise
With SDV Transami as the transporter, the sugar business boomed. Soon, Bit-Bit Uganda was loading 40 to 50 railway wagons of sugar to Kampala. All loans were paid off in a short time. Kitgum House was never under threat, really.
But then trouble started brewing shortly after the overthrow of Tito Okello by the National Resistance Army (NRA) in 1985. Obita says the Bit-Bit monopoly of sugar supply in Uganda irked the NRA government. The government later put a price tag on sugar to prevail over prices.
“One time, there was some kind of fundraiser for Luweero and we were approached by [Eria] Kategaya, then considered Number Two after Museveni. Bit-Bit naively and generously offered Shs20m, unaware that this was the starting point of “digging my own grave.”
Their committee sat, with some suggesting that they should not accept this money, which was considered ‘blood money.’ We realised there was a deep-seated hatred that was slowly manifesting itself because Bit-Bit was purely a business.
“They called us the Anyanya group,” Obita says. A well-calculated plan to bring Obita down was reportedly hatched.
“I got a call from Foods and Beverages that the Minister of Commerce, Evaristo Nyanzi, wanted to see me. A meeting was organised, upon which he told me that the government wanted sugar worth $6m (Shs21.4b). I said this was too much but we could see how to start. I began mobilising money through my usual guarantors and my personal businesses to a tune of $2m (Shs7b).”
‘Your account has been frozen’
Obita says to make sure the money was not tampered with, “I put it in a fixed account in Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB) as I waited for more.”
Obita also hastens to add that he did not expect anything as his guarantors continued to wax lyrical about him. This was until one day when one of his colleagues brought in a 20-feet whisky container and wanted money to clear it. Obita issued him a cheque, only for the man to come back and say the cheque had bounced. Obita protested, saying this was practically impossible.
He swiftly called the bank manager, who, in a low tone, told him to call the UCB credit manager, only identified as Kiiza.
Kiiza requested Obita to go to the bank as the matter could not be discussed on the phone.
“When I reached the bank with my lawyer, Ambassador Hassan Othieno, Kiiza broke down and cried. He said, ‘your account has been frozen.’ I almost collapsed. I was sweating and all my clothes were drenched in sweat.”
Kiiza said government agents had come and asked for the list of all Obita’s guarantors.
The bank was ordered to pick some of this money and pay all of it, before putting a permanent seal on his account.
“It is this that awakened me, as to why all my guarantors were thanking me,” Obita recalls, his face replicating the reflection of that day.
In total shock that same evening, a person, speaking Luganda, approached Obita under the cover of darkness and told him his life was in danger. He added that security officials had a file on Obita codenamed the GODFATHER.
Two days after this warning, two men wielding guns attempted to kidnap Obita as he drove into his office premises.
He sped directly into them, forcing them to scatter in different directions before vanishing into thin air. His home was also surrounded by strange people all the time.
To Obita, this was the final warning that what awaited him was a coffin. He hatched another plan to escape from Uganda. Read about the perilousness of Obita’s second escape out of Uganda next weekend.
