Ex-president Obote’s Sons Order Minister Betty Amongi to Vacate Father’s Homes

The family of former President Dr Apollo Milton Obote has ordered Gender, Labour and Social Development Minister Betty Amongi Ongom to immediately stop operating from President Obote’s home in Lira City.

The family, headed by the eldest son and heir, Tony Akaki, accuses Amongi of using the residence to campaign for President Yoweri Museveni and the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).

In a statement which this publication has seen, Akaki, said he had seen with “disdain and disgust” reports that Amongi was campaigning for the continuation of what he described as a military dictatorship from President Obote’s home.

Akaki said the family’s anger was heightened by remarks allegedly made by Amongi in March in which she insulted former First Lady Maama Miria Obote, claiming that Obote’s wife had failed to uphold the Obote legacy and that Amongi herself was the one preserving and protecting the Obote name.

“Betty Amongi and her team of NRM goons and sympathizers should vacate President Obote’s home forthwith,” Akaki stated.

He said that with the tacit approval of his brothers, President Obote’s sons, the family is calling on Amongi to stop operating from any of their father’s homes, stressing that she was not welcome in any of them.

The sons accuse Amongi of infecting the Obote family with a reputation of mismanagement, alleged corruption, and the abuse of access to NRM patronage and public resources for personal aggrandisement.

Her actions, the family said, go against the values President Obote stood for and on which he built the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC).

Akaki cited a message delivered by President Obote in October 1998 to the AMO Club International Conference in London, in which Obote stated that the mission of the UPC since January 26, 1986, had been and would continue to be the removal of the dictatorship proclaimed by the NRA.

The Obote family said the struggle to free Uganda from what it described as the NRM dictatorship continues and strongly condemned all forms of human rights abuses, including illegal detentions, torture, violations of property rights, and what it termed the draconian repression of opposition political parties.