BRIG. MAYOMBO NOBLE WAS A MAN OF THE PEOPLE

President Yoweri Museveni throws soil into Mayombo’s grave during the burial in Kabarole District yesterday

BRIG. Noble Mayombo had been on a hit list of criminal groups in the region and the investigations into his death are following that line, President Yoweri Museveni revealed yesterday. “Our security services have been looking at criminally-minded characters in the region, who have been saying that by eliminating NRM cadres, they would finish the NRM. Mayombo’s name was high on that list, and of course also Museveni’s, as the head,” the President said at the burial of the permanent secretary in the defence ministry in Kijura, Kabarole District. Addressing over 10,000 mourners, Museveni said there was a lot of material on the activities of that group. “This material will be availed to three persons who are in charge of the investigations: Col. James Mugira, a lawyer by profession; Lt. Rusoke, a bio-chemist with a Master’s in toxicology; and a senior doctor whom I have identified, but not yet consulted.” He added that Mayombo had been warned about the intentions of that group and had been told to be careful. “But criminal scheming is not the same as succeeding. They have been planning, but not succeeding,” he said. The second line of investigations, Museveni disclosed, concerned a health problem Mayombo had had for over a decade and, it was recently discovered, had not been managed well. The President described his former aide-de-camp as “very bright”. He said Mayombo grasped matters very quickly, was a hard and fast worker who was articulate and would draft complex papers in a record 12 hours. He called him an African nationalist and a pan-Africanist, and added that he was incorruptible. Museveni said: “Mayombo was once approached by two corrupt actors who proposed separately to each build him a house for free. He asked them: ‘Why should you build a house for me? What do you owe me?’ He then reported them to me. Our systems are investigating where they get the money from. They wanted to kill him morally.” Museveni said Mayombo had helped him to straighten out the defence ministry, which was losing money through unnecessary expenditure. He cited housing in the army, where Mayombo suggested that contractors be hired to build houses and be paid from the ministry’s budget in phases. Mayombo also found solutions to “diversionary” matters like fuel and weapons acquisition. “Mayombo had relieved me of that burden. He had become a problem-solver. He would present me with different options to choose from. That way, Mayombo promoted me from being a planner to a decision-maker,” the President said. He vowed to continue to reform the civil service. “The Police is gradually being reformed by Kale Kayihura, who is Mayombo-like. Mayombo showed us that when you are both an ideologist and an administrator, you are the best. Mayombo made the ministry of defence a self-propelled gun, as opposedto a towed howitzer, like it had been.” He vowed to continue what he called the “Mayombo combination”: education, ideology and soldiership. “There is quite a crop of young people in the UPDF that potentially have that combination,” the President asserted. Museveni promised the UPDF would look after the bereaved family. “I have contributed sh30m to the trust fund for the children. If we continue what Museveni has been doing and we look after the children, Uganda will continue to grow and become a modern country, which is what Mayombo wanted,” he concluded