{UAH} Museveni not under threat - SFC
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10:56 PM |
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Safely guarded: Museveni at State House, Nakasero
Responding to the incident, the SFC spokesman, Maj Chris Magezi,assures Shifa Mwesigye that President Museveni’s security is not under threat and that presidential guards are only human. Excerpts:
What happened that night?
You see whereas it is true that members of the Special Forces Command are some of the best trained and the most disciplined in UPDF, as human beings some members may have some weaknesses which can make them get out of line like what happened in the case of the late Corporal Michael Ochom.
He has served with SFC for the last 14 years but overall he has been in the army for 24 years. You cannot survive for that long if you are not focused and a disciplined soldier.
So, there is no doubt Ochom was a hardworking and disciplined soldier. But there are issues which suddenly changed his behaviour shortly prior to that incident and this we are going to investigate further in the body of inquiry.
What are these issues you are talking about?
That is what I am saying; we are going to investigate further in the body of inquiry which has been established by the Commandant of the Special Forces Command Brig Kainerugaba Muhoozi.
On Friday night, Corporal Ochom was deployed at the armoury but he seemed to be a disturbed man and he appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or some other substances. So, his supervisors thought he was not in a good state of mind to continue with the job. So, he was disarmed and when he was being taken to the cells, he escaped in the dead of the night only to turn up at 5am the following morning on Saturday.
This is contrary to our standing operating procedures. Usually if somebody is coming to enter the barracks at that time, the guards on sentry will challenge you. So, he was challenged and Sergeant Peter Makanga was the guard commander at that time.
Instead of following the commands he was being given, Corporal Ochom instead dived for Makanga, wrestled him down, took away his gun and shot him several times in the stomach. Sergeant Peter Makanga died instantly.
Was Makanga alone all this time?
There were others; he (Ochom) was still being given the benefit of doubt but he appeared to be looking to shoot others; so, one of the guards on duty was compelled to take him out. We are happy that the situation was contained swiftly; otherwise, there could have been more fatalities.
How do you know he was not doing this intentionally? You said so yourself that Ochom was a disciplined man...
If you heard me clearly I said he was suspected to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol or some other toxic substances. Now the body of inquiry will get to the bottom of this.
We will look at the postmortem results, they will guide us further to see what was in his system but our initial suspicion was that he was conducting himself in a manner which made him look like he was intoxicated.
Are presidential guards free to take alcohol or abuse substances on the job?
Absolutely not, but sometimes they will go out of their way to use alcohol or some other drugs. These are the human weaknesses I am talking about.
He disappeared at 8pm on Friday night and turned up at 5am on Saturday. Where in State House, which is tightly guarded, was he hiding that he couldn’t be found?
Under the cover of darkness, anything is possible. He is a soldier who has been working with us for a long time; so, he knows the State House environs very well.
At this time we do not have all the information but the body of inquiry which will start sitting effective next Monday will find out more about the circumstances before, during and after the incident.
Here was a man who seemed to be a threat. How come there was no manhunt for him given the resources at the SFC’s disposal?
You see if somebody has been working with you for the last 14 years, even when he behaves in the manner Ochom did, it doesn’t really call for that heightened threat level like it would have been if it was a stranger.
So, initially we perceived it merely as an act of indiscipline. We just waited for an appropriate moment to arrest him and have him explain his actions. We have a unit disciplinary court for the Special Forces; so, he could have ended up there according to the UPDF Act. But for some reason, Corporal Ochom decided to act the way he did and the consequences are very regrettable.
There have been many nasty incidents involving presidential guards... Has the president been a target?
Absolutely not; the president was not even at State House that day. So, the president is not at all involved in this. This is an isolated case, an act of indiscipline from what we can observe right now.
What measures have you put in place to ensure that incidents like Ochom’s do not reoccur?
We have done everything possible as SFC to ensure that the security of the president and the first family and other State House staff is never compromised. Our work speaks for itself.
The few cases that have been coming up are clearly isolated incidents of individuals who had their own issues in their private lives. Not because of the institution or the Special Forces that they serve. They had other personal grievances.
Sometimes the issues are not very serious; they can be prevented but sometimes they do not get appropriate advice from their superiors and they end up making mistakes. So, we always advise our soldiers to approach their superiors who are always available all the time. No problem is too big to solve.
Can you assure the country that the president is safe?
The president’s security, that of the first family, is not under threat at all from anybody or us and there is no cause for alarm. Maybe because of the job we do of ensuring the security of the president and the presidency in general, maybe sometimes when things like these happen, some quarters look at it as a very very unique thing.
It is not, especially in the army whether in Uganda or any other country. Such things are bound to happen. Even in civilian life these things have been happening. People are killing others and committing suicide, people are taking the law in their hands. At the end of the day what it shows is that we are human just like the rest of society.
smwesigye@observer.ug
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