Plot in Gen Sejusa's Muhoozi Project expose remains thicker

Eleven years after ex-spy chief David Sejusa's expose, he and Amama Mbabazi, among the prime targets remain at large but analysts believe his intel was spot-on

FLASHBACK |  Eleven years ago on April 29, General David Tinyefuza, aka Sejusa, executed an extraordinary constitutional stab at General Yoweri Museveni that continues to shape political debate to-date.

In a missive that he  leaked to the Daily Monitor newspaper, Gen Sejusa said there was a plot to systematically track First Son Muhoozi Kainerugaba into the presidency and that those opposed to the grooming would be bumped off.

He asked the director of Internal Security Organisation to investigate reports that top military officers, including the President’s brother, General Salim Saleh, had hatched a plot to eliminate senior government officials opposed to the ‘Muhoozi Project’.

"Yes, I did author that letter sometime back and yes it is my letter," he was quoted as saying.

"The reason I have written this letter, is in regard to the very serious allegations that have appeared in the press that IGP, Brig MK, Gen SS, one Kellen and others hatched an evil and extrajudicial plan of stage-managing the attack on Mbuya barracks [in March 2013] so as to frame some senior members of this government especially I, [Prime Minister] Amama Mbabazi and CDF Gen Aronda and those perceived to be anti-Brig Muhoozi project."

The letter threw the government into a rollercoaster of counter-denials. Then police chief Gen Kale Kayihura, and the first chief of defence forces Gen Aronda Nyakairima almost immediately addressed the media to trash Sejusa's claims.

Gen Aronda had been named - alongside former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi - as one of the prime targets.

He was internal affairs minister when he died two years later of "acute heart failure due to extensive and irreversible blockade of the heart blood vessel" while on a flight from South Korea to Entebbe via Dubai.

Gen Sejusa had asked ISO to investigate the "very serious claims that the same actors are re-organising elements of former Wembley under one police officer Nixon Ayegasire to assassinate people who disagree with this so-called family project of holding onto power in perpetuity."

Mr Ayegasire was a security operative with close ties to Gen Kayihura in the Police Force's special operations unit.

Gen Sejusa, who was the coordinator of intelligence services, said intelligence had picked "some clandestine actions by this reckless and rather naïve actors to have some youth recruited as rebels and then frame some members of security services and key politicians perceived as anti-establishment."

Shaping debate

The Muhoozi Project letter has shaped the political debate of the country over the last 11 years.

Muhoozi, then a Brigadier who led the Special Forces Command (SFC) that is largely tasked with security of the President and his family.

He has since scaled the highest rank in the Ugandan army and was in March appointed as the chief of defence forces.

Reflecting on the divisive letter and the train the country rattles on into the future, a section of political actors such as former ethics minister Miria Matembe couldn't agree more.

But Patrick Wakida, political analyst, adopted a balanced perspective, saying Sejusa was an insider who knew what was going on but he also feels there is still so much "here and there" to put a thumb on the alleged project.

"Sejusa was an an insider, he had studied the political dynamics within the within their party," Wakida says.

"He had seen the workings, the maneuvers that were being done and therefore it was right to say that there was a project called the Muhoozi."

Mr Wakida's oar on one side rows a tide that says the Muhoozi Project "is within our face" and that "you can see a transition happening and Muhoozi being handed power", but that there is no knowing with certainty what can happen.

Gen Muhoozi split hairs in the recent past on social media with explicit avowal to step into the presidency.

He once swore in the name of Jesus to run for his father's seat come 2026 and after launching a queer organisation, People's League Uganda, that is neither here nor there, he looked like he was diving into the deepend.

But all of a sudden, Mr Museveni had clipped a wing by forcing his son to shave off his newfound trademark 'O' beard. He made Muhoozi stay within the acceptable military discipline moustache with his appointment as CDF.

Gen Muhoozi's two loyal cadres in Balaam Barugahara and Lillian Aber, to0, were appointed to the Cabinet, effectively keeping them too busy to utter any more "General MK is our generational leader for 2026".

But Buyaga County MP Barnabas Tinkasimire maintains the ball is still rolling and says is determined to deflate it.

"He [Sejusa] was very right 100 percent," says MP Tinkasimire.

Former presidential candidate Joseph Kabuleta agrees, too. "He was, most definitely, right and, of course, having been the head of intelligence, he knew what he was talking about."

Drawing into the past dynamics, Matembe recalled of when then Mbarara Municipality MP Winnie Byanyima questioned why Muhoozi was recruiting people into the army.

"I told you that the President had told me that he was choosing Muhoozi to recruit and mobilise children in schools to join the army," Matembe says.

"The project started a long time [ago] but we didn't know and we were thinking that our leader was genuine. He was planning the project and now everybody can see it. What we don't know yet is how they want to implement it but everything is geared towards that."

Ms Matembe also pointed to the way institutions are being shaped today, citing the infusion of the military into virtually every sphere of the social, political and economic fabrics of the country.

"You really need to see how every institution, department or ministries or whatever are militarised," she said.

"When you find that agriculture is the military, go on the road, it is the military... you find the military are the ones in the ministries, they are the ones in institutions and key installations."

Like Ms Matembe, National Economic Empowerment Dialogue party president Kabuleta is adamant the project has been on for all of 30 years.

"From the mid-90s when they started recruiting from university as sort of army of his own or something," he said.

Mr Kabuleta believes there is already a plan for Gen Muhoozi to avoid the scrutiny of universal adult suffrage to be elected.

"That plan is not there. He cannot be elected, he's not a politician, he's not a leader. You can't even speak," he says.

"They're planning other means, may be through a parliamentary system."

In 2022, there were reports of plans to amend the Constitution and adopt a parliamentary system, in which Parliament forms the electoral college that elects the president - such as that cut by Togo earlier this year.

But the wheel has not yet been set into motion - if it ever will.

MP Tinkansimire, too, does not see Gen Muhoozi on the ballot any time soon, saying "he would be defeated badly".

"He may overthrow his father," Tinkansimire adds.

Back then...

Following the publication of the content of the letter on May 7, 2013, Gen Sejusa fled to exile in London, UK, - leaving the writers, Richard Wanambwa and Risdel Kasasira, as well as then managing editor Don Wanyama - in the crosshairs of security scope.

It was a matter of time for the newspaper to be raided by security operatives but what happened next was totally off the hook.

A reporter with insatiable appetite for Gonzaga's weakness advised a security chief to consider the raid on their own employer, close it off and search the newsroom for whatever they were interested in.

On May 20, security raided Namuwongo and Namanve for Red Pepper that had also followed up with extensive coverage of the missive - but more as a cover to reduce the attention on Monitor.

The reporter whose advice led to the closure of the publications would also be pictured holding placards as journalists protested the raid.

For nine days, security geeks reportedly scanned the newsroom servers in Namuwongo at their leisure, going beyond the Sejusa issue to dig into more troves of files of interest.

Gen Sejusa, who had alleged plots to bump him off while in exile in London, landed back in the country shortly after 3.10am on December 13, 2014, aboard a British Airways flight.

He would meet President Museveni days later, his third rehabilitation - after the August 5, 1984 fallout in the jungles of Luwero over women, and the March 12, 1996 retirement attempt over 'harassment' - in motion.

Mr Kabuleta believes Sejusa's intel, including claims of bumping off those opposed to the Muhoozi Project, was spot-on, saying there are rumours that some people were really bumped off.

"I can't say who but there are rumours," he offered.

But Sejusa himself remains at large, as is Mr Mbabazi. Aronda died suddenly, leaving a shroud of mystery but with not much to put a finger to the April 29, 2013 missive.

Yet without the casualty figures, the 2013 intel appears convincing enough to the majority members of the public.