{UAH} OCEN NEKYON'S FATHER RECRUTED MUSEVENI INTO INTELLIGENCE

Adoko: The man who mentored the president

Posted  Sunday, January 24  2010 at  11:19

 

Dr Akena Adoko, who died in a London hospital aged 82 on January 8, was a pioneering intellectual who mentored President Yoweri Museveni in the late 1960s.

“He was interested in clever young men. When he saw one, regardless of tribe, he recruited him to see how he could develop his potential; that’s what happened with Museveni,” said Dr Adoko’s brother, Herbert Akora.

An American-educated anthropologist, Dr Adoko was a fearless crusader who took on the authorities regardless of the risks involved, friends and relatives said. He was one of Uganda’s earliest chief magistrates and later became the first African president of the Uganda Law Society.

The first head of the post-colonial national intelligence service, Dr Adoko warned Milton Obote of a plot by the then Colonel Idi Amin, who commanded the national army, to overthrow him.

“Obote did not act fast enough and the coup happened,” said Ugandan judge Richard Okumu-Wengi, who worked under Adoko in the 1960s. The coup, on January 25, 1971, later plunged the country into an orgy of killings and misrule that ended when an invading army of Ugandan exiles toppled Amin in April 1979 helped by Tanzanian troops.

“He was a fast thinker who nonetheless chose to stay out of politics,” said former Ugandan legislator Adoko Nekyon, a cousin of Dr Adoko’s.
“He preferred to front others, after mentoring them; that was his style,” added Okumu-Wengi.

Dr Adoko was the pioneer head of the government intelligence arm, the General Service Unit, originally formed to provide economic intelligence, but which later transformed into a spy group for the new post-colonial government.
“The group was formed in 1964, two years after Independence and Dr Adoko was charged with operationalising it. It was at this time that he recruited Museveni alongside others to work for the group,” close friends said.

Museveni, who was hired as a research officer in the group, later went into exile after Amin’s coup and formed a militia that was instrumental in deposing the late dictator.

Adoko fled alongside Obote — a blood cousin — to exile in Tanzania where he was quickly hired as administrator general, a key post in that country’s Justice Ministry then.

“That was Adoko. Put him anywhere and he would thrive,” said Okumu.

An author of at least a dozen books including the local bestseller From Obote to Obote, which gave a poetic rendition of the twice-ruler’s exploits and the sequence of his unprecedented return to power, he was born Naphlim Akena Auru Adoko into a family of 43 children in tiny Akokoro village in the northern Lango district in 1928.

He was educated at the University of Khartoum, in India and in the United Kingdom before going to the University of Washington.

An unrelenting volunteer, he was given the Papal Knight of Saint Gregory the Great — a rare recognition of lay Catholics — after he headed a committee to plan for the 1969 visit of Pope Paul VI to Uganda.

“He was always busy reading books or writing something. He also pioneered a popular and cutting-edge live prime-time talk-show on national television,” said Akora.

Dr Adoko had suffered from cancer of the kidneys for two years but his death was probably quickened by the death of his first-born son Patrick in London two months ago, Hon Nekyon said.

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"