Lessons From The Obote Coup ; Chris Opoka And North Korean Ambassador Were Five Minutes Away From Repelling The 27thjuly 1985 Tito Okello Coup

Lessons From The Obote Coup ; Chris Opoka And North Korean Ambassador Were Five Minutes Away From Repelling The 27thjuly 1985 Tito Okello Coup 

 

Gen Tito Okello overthrew president Obote\s government

Today is 27^th July, a day that will always be remembered for the military coup that toppled president Milton Obote in 1985 for the second time after the first one that was orchestrated by Gen Idi Amin in 1971.

As an enthusiast of Uganda’s political history, I have read widely and researched about the political events in this country-most especially contemporary history and found very interesting revelations about these coups.

In 2008 I endeavored to find out what really caused the 1985 whose actors were almost from the same ethnic group;-both president Obote who was overthrown and Gen Tito Okello who orchestrated the coup were from the luo ethnic group.

The 27^th July 1985 Inside Story

So I used my opportunity as a journalist to interview as many members of the former UPC government as possible with the motive of finding out what really went wrong.

The pertinent question was; how could president Obote lose power so easily to a section of illiterate military officers who speak the same language as he does?

I was able to interview some former ministers from the Obote government like Mr James Rwanyarare who gave me an interesting version of events of the time.

The Rwanyarare Version

And he told me that after the death of Maj Gen David Oyite Ojok, president Obote developed a paralysis of some sort. He withdrew from public circulation and was almost inaccessible.

THE Late Maj Gen David Oyite Ojok

The death of David Ojok had hit president obote so hard that he was inconsolable. Ojok had managed to train and retrain the UNLA to some level after the departure of the Tanzanians who had overthrown president Amin in 1979.

It must be recalled that by 1981, the UNLA was still struggling to assert its control on the country, but before it could even stamp its authority on the country, a civil war broke out in central Uganda orchestrated by over a dozen rebel groups.

President Obote assigned Ojok to fight the insurgency was suddenly killed in a helicopter crash in the jungles of luwero. That was the time a section of Acholi civilian officials (not military) working in government started plotting to overthrow Obote..

 

They convened meetings code named, Let Acholi Also Try In several parts of Kampala like Apollo hotel (now Sheraton hotel)  and Kampala club.

At that time, James Rwanyarare says, president Obote had not even appointed anyone to replace Oyite Ojok as army chief of staff. 

So he says that it’s wrong to deduce that Acholi officers decided to overthrow Obote because he had decided to appoint his tribes mate, Brigadier Smith Opon Achak as the chief of staff instead of an Acholi.

And in any case, Rwanyarare says, Smith was a Sandhurst trained and therefore more trained than either Brigadier Bazilio Okelllo or any other officer in the UNLA who desired to take the post.

But Rwanyarare insists that by the time of his death in 1983, Museveni’s NRA bandits had been defeated completely and relocated to Zaire. Kayiira’s UFM had also been defeated completely.

He recalls the moment when information leaked that the rebels were fleeing towards the Rwenzori mountains and obote assigned him, Peter Otai And Gen Tito Okello to take care of the situation.

But gen TitO Okello took the situation lightly. If the army had deployed, there is no chance that Museveni would have managed to win the war, he says.

It’s that section of the NRA that managed to make decisive attacks on government from fort portal which eventually led to Museveni’s final takeover of government in 1986.

So, Rwanyarare says , the Acholi’s undermined the UPC government to a point of no return and Obote couldn’t do much about it because he considered them as his ‘people’.

Chris Opoka Narrates

Then I managed to talk to chris Opoka , now EALA representative who says that he was a political commissar of the UNLA at the time and was aware of what was going on in the country.

He says that when it became apparent that the two Okellos ,( Bazilio and Tito) were in advanced stages of doing something militarily nasty, he drove to the residence of the then army chief of staff , Brigadier smith Opon Achak whom he found not only very drunk but in the company of women.
At that time on the morning of 27th July 1985, Opoka had

got wind of the secret that the president had fled the country.
His close minister led by Chris Rwakasis had thrown in the towel after realizing that the okello UNLA loyalists had crossed karuma.

‘’ We found Opon Achak sipping a bottle of jack Daniels, and we asked him to deploy on Bombo road to intercept the renegade UNLA officers who were advancing towards Kampala.

Several other ministers including chris rwakasisi pleaded with Opon acak to do something about the situation.

But Brigadier Achak simply assured them that he was going to take immediate action, which he never did!!!.

Meanwhile, according to Opoka,  a contingent of  UNLA soldiers were inching towards Kampala.

They managed to easily co-opt Masindi barracks into the coup project, but after killing a UNLA captain and a major who had refused to join them.

As they reached Bombo, Opoka realize the untenability of the situation and ran to the official residence of the North Korean ambassador and told him that it was possible to avert the coup by taking over radio Uganda and announcing a counter coup.

The radio announcement would have the effect of confusing the okellos as the other battalions of Tororo, Mbarara were mobilized to intervene to stop the okellos.

At that time the UPC government had concrete bilateral military engagements with the North Korean government to an extent of providing weaponry and personnel who trained the UNLA.

Opoka says that the ambassador agreed but delayed on his breakfast.

So when he finished his breakfast and created a convoy of five well armed jeeps and drove with chris Opoka to radio Uganda at around 10;45, bullets started  raining at their destination; radio Uganda.

They tried to drive on but it became impossible to do so without first finding out what was going on.

As they were still fidgeting, a UNLA officer by the names of Lt Walter Ochora announced that the army had overthrown president Obote’s government!

Later on the late Walter Ochora who rose to become a colonel said that he did not overthrow the Obote government but only helped to bury it!

COL Walter Ochora announced the coup on27th July 1985

In other words, it was already dead. Ochora wonders how a few soldiers could easily drive to the capital city and manage to overthrow a sitting government!.

The military junta of the Okellos only managed to rule for six months before it was inevitably overthrown in January 1986 by president Museveni’s NRA.

It’s now 31 years since that coup and the people who lost power have tried but failed to regain it.  

There is a rumor that while entering the car that drove him to exile, president Obote cursed the Acholi by saying that they will regret their action. And indeed the counter revolutionary civil war that was designed to return the Acholis to power led by Joseph Kony affected Acholi for more than two decades.

Lessons From The 1985 Coup

In Africa, there is a presumption that leaders from the same ethnic group can form a cohesive government because (1) they speak the same language and. (2) they believe in the same values.

That explains why African presidents usually engage in absolute nepotism, sectarianism and tribalism when making appointments. 

But Obote (who was langi by tribe) lost power to a Gen Tito Okelo (an Acholi) with whom they almost shared the same language since both tribes are from the same luo sub ethnic group.

  Therefore the 1985 coup proves that theory as a bankrupt form of analysis.

 Obote’s paradoxical story has strong similarities to the story of Liberia’s Sergeant Samuel Kenyon Doe who overthrew president Tolbert whose was a close relative.

It also has resemblance to the one of Equaltorial Guiniea where incumbent president Theodore Mbasogo Nguema came to power by overthrowing his uncle Francis Mathias Ngeuma.

What does this show; it simply proves that nepotism, sectarianism, cronyism, and tribalism is not a guarantee that a leader who surrounds himself with friends, relatives and tribesmen is immune to getting overthrown.

Leaders who survive for a longtime in power do so through sustained goodwill of the people and not necessarily through, tribalism, nepotism favoritism and cronyism.

 The Author Fred Daka Kamwada Is A Political Analyst And A Blogger