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
In a four-part series titled The Life and Times of Dr Obita, Dusman Okee revisits the remarkable story of Dr Alfred James Obita, a son of a carpenter from Ayul Village in Kitgum District, who rose to become one of the richest Ugandans in the 1980s.
A property mogul whose abode was in the leafy Kampala suburb of Muyenga, Obita’s business empire was built around a sugar supply monopoly at the time the sweetener was a rarity in Uganda.
When he was deemed persona non grata by the Museveni regime, Obita found refuge in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), serving as the leader of its external wing.
Once put on a firing squad by the very LRA he led, Obita survived after the count began.
Years later, he found himself pronounced dead by medical doctors and was being wheeled to a mortuary.
Like the proverbial phoenix, he rose from the ashes.
His story reads like one of the mysteries conjured by the best-selling author of all time, Christie Agatha.
Dr Alfred James Obita was born on November 11, 1949, to Apok and Motikayo Oneka in the northern district of Kitgum.
Obita attended Kitgum Primary school and Sir Samuel Baker School in Gulu District, before joining Makerere University, where he undertook a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Chemistry.
That was in 1972. It felt like the pinnacle for Obita, the son of a canon and carpenter-turned-businessman with the Bata shoes franchise in the northern region.
But more was to come. Obita grew up knowing money can only be obtained through self-employment. At least wads of it.
This was after seeing first-hand the success of his father, a gifted carpenter who supplied desks to schools and churches.
One of his clients was Janani Luwum, an Anglican bishop who served as the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda between 1974 and 1977.
“Because of honesty and integrity, Archbishop Luwum liked my father so much. They became such strong friends with the archbishop that Luwum could come home for lunch and dinner at any time. Through the Church and the archbishop, he gave his life to Christ and later became a canon,” Obita said in an interview.
The archbishop was not the only one to leave an indelible mark on Obita’s father.
In the early 1970s, after representatives of the Bata shoes company, a multinational footwear manufacturer, convinced Idi Amin to make concessions that green-lit its operations in Uganda, Obita’s father would open a new page.
Making an adjustment to his nationalisation plans, Amin only allowed the Bata Shoe Company to own a 51 percent stake in its business against a 49 percent stake for the Government of Uganda (GoU).
At one point, Thomas J Bata—the chief executive of the Bata Shoe Company—visited Uganda in a bid to ensure the footwear manufacturer gained traction in the country.
He famously commissioned the franchise in northern Uganda, where the shop of Obita’s father in Kitgum was cherry-picked.
A demigod at Mak
Since his family enjoyed such wealth and status, it should come as no surprise that the red carpet was rolled out for Obita at Makerere University. Literally.
With word on the grapevine convincing students that Obita held the “biggest account” at the Uganda Commercial Bank’s Makerere branch, he was promptly christened a tycoon.
And maybe he was. Obita’s father had put his impressionable son in charge of all Bata shoe consignments in Kampala.
Travelling to the capital from Kitgum was a high-risk endevour since Amin had Acholi like him on a short leash.
Consequently, Obita could sell products and bank the money on his account. A big part of it was for his upkeep.
Fellow students, mostly girls, followed and worshipped the ground on which he walked.
This was, for the most part, at the Guild Canteen where Obita picked up the tab for drinks and eats.
At the time, he was pursuing his Master’s Degree in Chemistry after earlier graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry.
Things, however, took a twist, when prominent Acholi began disappearing.
Soon, this rich boy, who was making a splash at the hill in Makerere, found himself surrounded by strangers disguised as students.
“I didn’t take it seriously until one morning when I was at my uncle’s house in Mbuya Barracks,” Obita recalled, adding:
“Soldiers came and surrounded his house. He was a captain. Together with others, he was rounded off, put in that unpopular three-tonne lorry and we later learnt that they were taken to Mukukala and executed.”
On the down-low
When Obita returned to the ivory tower in Makerere, he resolved to be cautious.
His cover was, however, blown one afternoon following the actions of Olara Otunnu, the guild president at the time.
Obita and Otunnu were bosom buddies at the time.
“That afternoon, we had earlier been told to gather at the University Hall and that the President would come and address us. Indeed, we were anxious, given that most of us wanted to see Idi Amin live for the first time. He did not disappoint. He appeared in his trademark military jeep to a thunderous welcome from all students,” Obita told Saturday Monitor.
Everything went well until when Amin was about to leave. He asked if anybody had a question.
Otunnu majestically stepped forward, introduced himself, looked directly into Amin’s eyes and thanked him for his address.
He then proceeded to tell the President that one fundamental mistake Amin had made was to expel the Indians.
No-one had dared to tell Amin this face-to-face. At least publicly.
Amin is said to have looked directly into Otunnu’s eyes and sarcastically laughed.
His reply was terse. “You will soon know,” the President is reported to have said.
That same evening, the much-feared State Research Bureau began the hunt for Otunnu.
With the university invisibly sealed off, Otunnu was hidden by fellow students from hall to hall, room to room and bed to bed.
This went on until a plan was hatched to smuggle him out of the country.
With smuggling of goods rampant across borders, a racket of people smugglers was soon roped in.
But since a person, moreover one on the government’s hit list, was at the heart of it, this would not come on the cheap. Never mind that Kenya was the destination.
Fleeing Uganda
It was not just Otunnu who was looking over his shoulder. Obita was too.
He continued to be trailed by Amin’s spies because of his closeness to Otunnu and the fact that both hailed from Kitgum.
It was one afternoon in 1977 when students heard that Archbishop Luwum had been arrested, only to be announced dead the next morning.
The State narrative was that a car accident near the Sheraton Hotel had proved to be fatal.
With the archbishop dead, Obita now had no safe space in Kampala.
He realised he had to do what Otunnu had done—flee.
Fortunately, during his heady days as a university “tycoon” and a Bata shoes distributor, Obita had cultivated some pretty useful contacts.
These included coffee smugglers, who had tasked him to get them an authentic coffee certificate of origin.
This was key and mandatory for the coffee smugglers in Kenya to access European markets.
“It looks like the coffee smugglers were the same people smugglers because, before I left, they told me of all things I should not leave this certificate behind for it could be my life support,” Obita told Saturday Monitor.
Not to arouse any suspicion, Obita had been saving money to smuggle him out of the country.
This money was kept separately from his bank account since Amin’s intense spy network kept eyes on anyone who withdrew large sums of money.
The UCB account was left intact.
Slowly, he walked out of the university one morning to a waiting car that took him up to the Busia border.
“These smugglers were well organised in that they worked on all your papers, and you didn’t even need to go to the immigration desk.
All went well and I remember they would take only one person at a time. I was the only one from Kampala that day, and, phew, eventually, we crossed into Kenya, to a sigh of relief, but great uncertainty,” he recalled.
The people smugglers drove him up to Naivasha, a Kenyan township, and handed him over to coffee smugglers who were anxiously waiting.
Obita said as soon as he met the smugglers at Naivasha, all they asked for was the certificate.
He immediately put it on the table in front of them.
They looked at him in disbelief and counted Ksh400,000.
Obita said he was driven to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi and the next day he hired a full apartment at the luxurious Buruburu estate.
Tomorrow, read about how Obita proceeded to stitch together a new life after fleeing Uganda.
