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Maj Gen David Oyite Ojok, more than almost any politician or military officer, was at the very centre of the Apollo Milton Obote regime.
Ojok, a political soldier, was many things –he was army chief of staff, the most influential army position, chairman of Coffee Marketing Board, Uganda’s main foreign exchange earner, and head of General Motors, the country’s biggest car dealership then.
In the last review of his book; Trapped In His own Prison of Nile Mansions for Five Years (Obote 2), the author; Rutarindwa Mwene Barizeni finds many examples to show that Ojok was the real power behind the second Milton Obote presidency. Below are excerpts.
After the fall of Idi Amin and indeed when the war that toppled him elapsed in 1979, it was Paulo Muwanga and Oyite Ojok who were saddled with the responsibility of bringing back the exiled Obote to power by all means.
Ojok was both a locally and foreign trained military officer. He was one of the many secondary school dropouts recruited into the army after independence to replace the colonial sergeants who at the time in 1962 were promoted into army leadership positions. President Obote picked him (Ojok) then because he was a son of the soil (a Langi) and groomed him as a future guardian of his rule.
When Obote left for a summit in Singapore, Ojok was given the task of executing a security plan designed to tame Idi Amin, the army commander. Ojok was confident of fulfilling the mission. Unfortunately for him and Obote, Amin beat them at their own game and seized power on the night of January 24, 1971, the night he was supposed to die.
The embarrassment Amin had caused to Ojok’s reputation kept haunting him and he could have sworn to Obote that he would have his revenge. On April 11, 1979, Idi Amin was toppled by Tanzanian forces together with some Ugandan fighters among them Oyite Ojok.
When Oyite Ojok returned to Uganda as a top commander of Obote’s fighting force; Kikosi Maalum, he considered himself the real force behind Amin’s downfall. He would, therefore, in a special way give back to his mentor Obote what he lost in 1971 by all means.
In a show of might, Ojok would be seen moving in centres of power like the Nile Mansions, Republic House, (Army Headquarters), President’s Office in the Parliamentary buildings as well as State House Entebbe. His most favourite cars were Mercedes Benz limousines with personalised number plates. In the beginning, the number plates carried imprints; DOO 1, DOO2, for David Oyite Ojok 1&2 and later as Obote was about to return, he changed the plates to MAO 1, MAO 2 and MAO 3 for Milton Apollo Obote 1,2, and 3.
After restoring his mentor firmly into power in December 1980, Ojok was rewarded and decorated with the rank of Major General and became the army’s chief of staff. On top of this, Obote made him the managing director of Uganda’s main foreign exchange earner, Coffee Marketing Board. Ojok soon paid more attention to coffee than the army.
In his capacity as the coffee chief in the country, and the man in charge of all arms and security, Ojok promised to arm coffee farmers in the central district of Mukono with all kinds of weapons to protect their precious coffee plantations. He acted on some security reports, which pointed to rebels hiding in the bushy coffee plantations. In a secret paper I came across at around this time, Oyite Ojok was the only Ugandan who was officially allowed to smuggle coffee out of the country.
In the field of business, Paulo Muwanga, the vice president, rewarded Ojok with a company well known for selling cars, General Motors. Ojok started a transport company with a fleet of 60 buses of 75-sitter capacity and named them “Owiny Kibul,” in memory of the a guerrilla camp in Southern Sudan, which Kikosi Maalum utilised during the struggle against Idi Amin. He later opened up a bank account in a Swiss bank, an account which never benefited him and his family but benefited his recommenders to the bank after his death.
For those who doubted Ojok’s authority in as far as state leadership was concerned, it did not take long before their doubts were erased by the man himself. On one occasion during a political party retreat for members of the ruling UPC party at a hotel in Lira in Northern Uganda, Major General Oyite Ojok arrived late and found all rooms booked by party members. He had no room to sleep in and in what seemed like a joke, the Secretary General of the ruling UPC, Dr Luwuliza Kirunda, told him not to worry much since he was a soldier who could as well sleep anywhere, the bush inclusive.
Kirunda thought he had cracked a joke. But to Ojok, it was an insult. At the hotel, Ojok called for the attention of everybody and he narrated what Kirunda had just said to him. To some it seemed unusual and indeed it wasn’t too much of a concern. An offended Ojok speaking on top of his voice and with a lot of a military commander’s authority, told the attentive retreat participants that they were all whoever they were because of him.
He warned that any other similar insults to his personality would lead to decisive action including taking over government and dumping them. Henceforth those who doubted where power lay in Obote’s regime got the message clearly. “Nyamurunga” Obote was a mere figurehead. That day marked a turning point in the house of UPC, the party of trickery.
Mighty Ojok dies
On the morning of November 26, 1983, two Augusta helicopters landed at the Nile Mansions, one at the helicopter pad and another directly in the compound at the foreground of the hotel. They had come to take UNLA top military commanders including the Army Chief of Staff Major General Oyite Ojok to Luweero district where rebels of former Defence Minister Yoweri Museveni were operating and relentlessly harassing government forces.
Obote, the president and commander in chief, had vowed to crush these rebels, kill their leader Yoweri Museveni and leave his body in the bushes. In the helicopter perched at the pad in the lower gardens, hotel staff loaded two crates of beer, two crates of soda two large pans, one with boiled beef stew and another one with boiled rice.
The second plane in the hotel compound would carry the commanders including Major General Oyite Ojok. After a comprehensive map study, the commanders boarded the plane and took off. The second plane followed and they both headed in the northern direction of Kampala.
That evening, one of the helicopters landed at Kololo airstrip. The occupants were picked by their different aides and driven back to their different destinations. As for the Chief of Staff Major General Oyite Ojok, he was picked and driven back to Nile Mansions where on arrival, he went straight to operations suite 211. His driver, Sergeant Steven Sebusani, a man from my home area and a long-time friend, stayed behind to chat with me at the bar.
He told me the operation to hunt down Museveni in Luweero had started. He told me “chief” was the one in charge of that operation. The operation went on for five straight days. We would retrieve from the carrier helicopter our empty beer and soda bottles and saucepans each morning and replenish as required.
On the morning of December 2, 1983, the two helicopters as usual landed at the hotel to take on the same mission. I knew some of the soldiers who boarded the helicopter with Major General Oyite Ojok that day. They were Major Engineer Abili and a Tanzanian private named Friday, among others. Friday, together with another major Kagata Namiti, were the closest assistants to Ojok since his return from exile.
Private Friday had been a good friend of the hotel staff and had during that week started bidding farewell to us as he arranged to return to Tanzania. As fate would have it, Private Friday who was supposed to be packing his belongings, was once more, requested by Ojok to board the helicopter and accompany him.
In the late evening hours of December 2, 1983, at around 9 pm, a soldier attached to operations room 211 walked from the stairs towards my bar. I could tell from his movements that he was seriously in need of a drink but he seemed to have no money on him.
When he finally reached, he started talking. “It’s a bad day today, my friend.” “Yes it’s a bad day indeed,” I answered rudely hoping he could call off his mission……Then he went on and said, “Very soon you will hear more but there is no hope at all. It is quite bad but what can one do?’’
I rang Buremba who was now preparing to leave his station to go to the balcony and monitor what was going on. “Don’t you think some accident might have occurred involving the Chief of Staff who might have been injured?’’ To this Buremba said, “No, you are wrong. He is not injured. He is dead.
When President Obote returned from his trip abroad, he declared a week of mourning for those who had perished in the helicopter accident but more so for his most trusted commander, David Oyite Ojok.
He had died without fulfilling his desire, the desire to kill Yoweri Museveni. This was the second failure of Ojok, and Obote must have become the most disturbed man on earth then. In the earlier incident, he had failed to kill Idi Amin and secure his rule, now a decade apart, he was gone forever having failed to kill Museveni, also an arch enemy. At the time of his death, Oyite Ojok left behind an anti-people army, worse than the one he used to topple Idi Amin.
On the day his requiem service was held, Ojok’s body was taken to Namirembe cathedral for the funeral service where the main celebrant chose the quote, Isaiah chapter 10:20 in the Bible. “They all call out to him, Now you are as weak as we are. You are now one of us…”
A few months after his death and burial, one of Oyite Ojok’s children called Simba committed suicide. He shot himself with a gun left in the house by his father. A short while after that incident, Ojok’s wife got involved in an accident that crippled her.
