A long-simmering domestic dispute between Kampala University founder Badru Dungu Kateregga and his wife Jolly Kateregga escalated this week and spilled into the public milieu, with fresh allegations of assault and a bitter contest over property and university control.
Jolly, who chairs the university’s Board of Trustees and previously served as its finance director, now finds herself at the centre of public accusations from her husband, who claims she physically attacked him during a domestic altercation in September 2023.
“This scar isn’t just from an argument—it’s from an ambush,” Prof Kateregga told a new conference at the university’s main campus. “She wants to wipe me out and take everything I’ve worked for.”
The two, married since 2012, had long been seen as partners in both life and academia. But the collapse of their union has spilled into public view, taking with it deep personal wounds and institutional implications.
But Jolly told local media the accusations as a fabrication meant to tarnish her image and exclude her from the university she helped shape.
“This is a cruel twist of our story,” the Daily Monitor quoted her as saying. “I’ve poured my life and loyalty into building something with him—only to be accused of trying to destroy it. It’s heart-breaking.”
According to Jolly, the breakdown in their marriage intensified in late 2023, after Prof Kateregga experienced serious health complications.
She said she oversaw his care, taking him from Georgina Clinic to Aga Khan Hospital and later to IHK, where he underwent surgery.
“After he began to recover, he refused to come back home,” Jolly said. “That’s when the accusations started. Even our children believed I had poisoned him, but all medical tests cleared me.”
But the professor insists the real fracture came when his wife allegedly demanded changes to his will ostensibly to leave her older children a previous marriage out.
“She wanted me to strike out my older children and leave everything to her and her children,” he said. “That was the moment I knew this wasn’t about love—it was about legacy.”
He also challenged her claims of co-founding Kampala University, saying she joined the institution as a student in 2009—years after it had opened.
“She came in as a student, not a founder,” he said. “I started Kampala University in 2003. She was still figuring out her career.”
Among the grievances, Prof Kateregga says he was locked out of their shared Buziga home—a property he claims to have owned long before their marriage.
“I added her to the land title to protect her,” he said. “Instead, she used it to edge me out.”
Jolly denies ever locking him out and maintains the property is co-owned. She says she was stunned when the allegations were first made in public.
“He blindsided me with those claims during a graduation ceremony,” she said. “Since then, I’ve been shut out of university matters completely.”
She also accused the professor of dragging her name through the mud across borders.
“He’s gone to Kenya and elsewhere telling damaging stories about me,” she said. “Yet I’m the one who saved the university from collapsing under a Shs6bn debt.”
The professor also claims that Jolly, as a student, graduated with unpaid tuition fees—a gesture he overlooked while “madly in love.” He says she now wants to control his legacy by pushing out his other children.
“I have more than 18 children. She wants only hers recognised. That’s not family—that’s control,” he said.
As the rift deepens, the dispute now threatens to destabilize both their personal lives and the leadership of Kampala University, one of Uganda’s most prominent private institutions.
“She can keep spinning stories,” Prof Kateregga said during the April 15 press briefing. “But what happened to me is real, and I won't be silenced.”