Gitta got on a collision path with ranking officers after he blew the whistle on ghosts on the army’s payroll. He ended up in jail and on the run, every time he tried to claim his pay cheque of Shs 55 million in salary arrears. The claim was ruinously frustrated.
He claims in a recent interview with The Observer that he has survived several assassination attempts orchestrated by “selfish senior army officers.”
He claims he has been kidnapped and jailed on trumped-up charges by high-ranking UPDF officers who have since died. He says he was struck off the payroll in 2002 and declared an army deserter.
When the Yoweri Museveni-led National Resistance Army (NRA) took power in 1986, the five-year guerilla war that ousted the Milton Obote government left a trail of destruction in central Uganda. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and many children were abandoned.
During the war, many school-going children were nudged by rebels to join the NRA. At 12 years old, Sgt. Gitta Musoke joined the struggle on December 19, 1983. Gitta, then a primary six pupil at Migadde PS in Matugga, Wakiso, was persuaded, along with seven other colleagues, to join the liberation struggle as they walked home from school.
“We could not resist the orders because the officers were armed and dressed in full army combat attire.”
We walked with soldiers till dawn. We met other children in uniform from schools in Ndejje and Kalasa in the bushes.
“They said we would be trained for two months and that war would break out soon, but our safety was assured,” Musoke recalled.
Gitta doesn’t regret joining the struggle as a child soldier. He fought under the 7th battalion, commanded by Maj Gen Matayo Kyaligonza. Years later, though, Gitta, 52, is now a disgruntled man. He is still chasing his salary arrears of about Shs 55 million. Musoke’s woes began in 2001, when he blew the whistle on 24,000 ghost soldiers on the army payroll created by thieving senior officers. He exposed the racket during a chance meeting with President Museveni.
According to Gitta, the infantry units then were supposed to have 730 fighters per battalion, but commanders created an additional 200 fake names in each and pocketed the monthly salaries.
“I came out as a sacrificial lamb to rescue the situation in the army, but the perpetrators instead mistreated me by keeping me in the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) safe houses; they tried to kill me, and eventually, the army declared me a deserter for being off duty, yet top commanders knew where I was,” he said.
Frustrated by the army bureaucracy, Gitta launched a media campaign to catch the president’s eye. In 2001, he pleaded with Gen. Kale Kayihura, then a military assistant to Museveni, to fix a meeting for him with the president, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Kayihura took Gitta to his residence in Buziga, Makindye. Kayihura claimed he had been instructed to secure Gitta after he exposed the ghost soldiers’ scam.
Gitta stayed in Buziga for about five months. Kayihura, according to Gitta, later received new orders to drive him to Museveni’s Kisozi farm in Gomba for a meeting. That meeting didn’t happen either. In 2004, Gitta finally met the president at State House, Nakasero. The president, he said, promised to reward him for exposing the ghost soldiers.
In the meeting attended by former Presidential Principal Secretary Amelia Kyambadde, Museveni, according to Gitta, promised to; sort his salary arrears from 2001 to 2004 [then], construct a house for him, promote him from the rank of sergeant to major, get him a job at State House, and educate his five children—all primary school dropouts—to university level. Eighteen years later, the president hasn’t delivered on any promise.
Gitta said the president was derailed by saboteurs who told him the sergeant had died. Gitta, however, has since the 2004 meeting received pocket money of Shs 2 million, safe custody at Summit View in Kololo, and Shs 1 million from Kyambadde to buy necessities in Kololo.
ARREARS WORTH SHS 55M
Gitta said he received his salary promptly until 2001, when he was deployed to the Congo to fight insurgent groups. He served for 10 months without pay. That amounted to arrears of Shs 1,450,000, calculated from his monthly take-home salary of Shs 145,000. When Museveni appointed Kayihura as chief political commissar in 2002, the former police chief deployed Gitta as a researcher in one of his offices in Bombo.
At the time, Kayihura was also heading the Special Revenue Police Unit, which made it easy for him to create some work for Gitta. But Kayihura asked Gitta to continue with his clerkship job in the army and forward all the vital reports. After 10 months without pay, Kayihura helped Gitta get reinstated on the army payroll. He got his pay cheques for four months before he was kidnapped on his way home by CMI operatives at the urging of the late Maj Gen James Kazini.
He said his kidnappers, CMI operatives, shot and killed the rider of the boda boda he used on the fateful day, May 29, 2002. He was arrested. He spent two and a half years in the CMI safe house in Kitante. He was rescued by retired Gen David Sejusa in 2004.
“At night, CMI officers came with cold wires—normally refrigerated—and beat me up for writing reports to the president. One got pliers and broke one of my right fingers. One hit my two front upper teeth with a metallic object until they dropped to the floor. Those who tortured me were Corporal Godfrey Biraaro and Sergeant Mutanywana. They later confessed to me that the mission was to kill me on sight in 2002,” Gitta said.
He wasn’t paid for seven months in 2002, coupled with arrears from 2003 to 2012—that comes to Shs 18,415,000 in arrears. From 2013 to 2017, officers at his rank got a pay rise from Shs 145,000 to Shs 410,000. This swelled Gitta’s arrears for the same years to Shs 24,600,000. In total, from 2002 [seven months only] to 2017, Gitta is claiming Shs 44,465,000 in salary arrears. As a clerk, he said, he also received monthly allowances of Shs 60,000. If his allowances are computed for the past 17 years, the figure would go higher.
Musoke has knocked on every door in his pursuit of a meeting with the president. In 2018, he wrote to Museveni’s son-in-law Odrek Rwabwogo, daughter Patience Rwabwogo in addition to attending prayers at her church in Luzira. He also wrote to former minister for the PresidencyEsther Mbayo. He has since written to the current minister for the Presidency Milly Babalanda, Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja, and met several army officials without much success.
He however, got a response when he wrote to the First Lady and minister for Education Janet Museveni in 2019.
“I got a response after three months. I was told to go to the Chief of Defense Forces, David Muhoozi in Mbuya to investigate my issues. “A year later, I was informed by Lt Gen Joseph Musanyufu [former Joint Chief of Staff] that I would be getting only Shs 29.4 million that covered 2011 to 2018, yet in my letter to the first lady, I expected payment from 2001 to 2017,” he said.
He added: “When I tried to challenge the amount, Musanyufu angrily told me that was the amount okayed by Maj Gen Abel Kandiho (former CMI boss). If I felt unsatisfied, he said I should appeal. Throughout the COVID-19 lockdown period, I walked to Mbuya several times but didn’t succeed. I neither received the little money nor promised a review of my appeal.”
CASE CLOSED – UPDF RESPONDS
The Observer recently interviewed UPDF spokesman Brig Gen Felix Kulayigye for this story. He was so furious that this paper had revisited the story.
“As far as I am concerned, the matter of Gitta Musoke was closed,” Kulayigye said.
“I first addressed that issue in 2010 and we never promised an investigation into his matter because he had not followed the procedures. So, I am shocked that you have the time to revisit a story that we think was concluded. There have been three UPDF spokespersons before me. Why are you bringing back his matter? I find it suspicious. I find it offensive to ask me the same things. We can’t keep on running back and forth,” he added.
Asked why Gitta insists the army owes him money, Kulayigye got more furious.
“Was he supposed to receive it? Did he fulfill the requirements he was given by the army? You just don’t walk and pick up government money. There are procedures. You must belong to a unit. Secondly, where does he work from? My question is: ever since we discussed the issue of Gitta almost 20 years ago, which unit does he belong to? We don’t pay any Tom, Dick, and Harry. You are paid according to where you are accounted for.”
He said daily rosters are conducted in the force to identify those who are present, the sick, and those on study leave, among others. He reiterated that the aspect of portraying the military as inhuman is what “some of us take offense about.”
Kulayigye said Gitta once served for more than two years in a military detention facility in Makindye. He said that sentence automatically disqualified Gitta from the army. He said Gitta is not entitled to any pay. According to Section 221(4)(b) of the UPDF Act, “A sentence of imprisonment for two years or more imposed upon any person subject to military law, shall be deemed to include dismissal with disgrace from the Defense Forces, whether or not the last-mentioned punishment is passed by the Unit Disciplinary Committee or court martial.”
Part (6) further notes that “A person upon whom a punishment of dismissal with disgrace from the Defense Forces has been carried out shall not, except in an emergency or unless that punishment is subsequently set aside or altered, be eligible to serve the Republic of Uganda again in any military capacity.”
Gitta was first jailed in a CMI safe house for two and a half years until his release in 2004. The following year, he was again kidnapped at the urging of the late Gen Aronda Nyakairima. He was jailed in Bombo for some time before he was whisked away to Luzira prison [Murchison Bay] where he “illegally” served two years.
He was re-arrested in 2012 in Kampala again on the orders of Nyakairima and detained at the Makindye, where he spent four years until January 29, 2016, when he was released “without a case to answer.”
“While in Makindye, my file indicated that Gen Aronda Nyakairima had directed that I be imprisoned for seven years, which I rejected. One lawyer advised me that they couldn’t go against the decision of Nyakairima.
“He [lawyer] pleaded with me to accept and serve for at least two years in Makindye yet I had already spent two years there without trial,” he said.
Kulayigye advised Gitta to appeal the ruling in the General Court Martial. Short of that, his dismissal stands. He, however, blamed Gitta for initially addressing his salary woes in the media.
“In the military and public service, once you run to the media, you have lost the plot. You are looking for publicity, and we wish you the best of luck. There, we deal with you as an outsider who’s attacking the image of the military, and this is what happened to Gitta,” Kulayigye said.
He added: “If you were treated unfairly, you cannot tell me that the entire army was against you. Gitta went up to the president.
“Now, when you appeal to the commander-in-chief, you are above the army structure.”
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Gitta is still fugitive. He lost his parents in 1983. Obote’s soldiers raided their villages in search of Museveni. Gitta’s parents are among the elders buried in a mass grave in Matugga near Mabanda stage. He was left in the company of six siblings. Unfortunately, four of his brothers also joined the army and died on missions in Gulu and Kisangani. His only two biological sisters also died.
“I am the only living child of my parents and with a few extended relatives. I heavily rely on handouts from friends,” Gitta, a former bodyguard to the late Fred Gisa Rwigema, said.
He added: “It pains me that I worked so hard as a child soldier but my enemies in the army especially Kazini [died 2009], Nyakairima [died 2015], and Brig Nobel Mayombo [died 2007] who made my life miserable have their families and children enjoying the fruits of their sweat unlike me. My only hope lies with President Museveni so that I can start all over again.”
inarticle} inarticle}