By Nasser Kasozi Akndwanaho
Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has on Thursday 08th October sacked the Internal Security Organisation [ISO] boss Col. Kaka Bagyenda.
Kaka Bagyenda with immediate effect been replaced by Charles Oluka, according to the presidential directive.
Oluka will be deputised by Emma Katabazi who has been heading the ISO media desk.
Kaka’s sacking follows a list of endless crimes that have been committed by ISO agents while he presided over the spy organisation.
In July this year, the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CMI, raided his safe houses in Kampala to restrain ISO, on an authoritarian course, which firmly leans on increased repression, kidnaps, abductions, torture, illegal arrests and detention of Ugandans.
In his three year stewardship of ISO, Col. Kaka has been accused severally, threatened with legal action and sued for kidnaps, abductions, illegal arrests and detention of Ugandans.
He has also earned unflattering mainstream media headlines for all the wrong reasons since January 2017 when he was appointed ISO head replacing the reclusive Brig. Ronnie Barya.
On camera and in broad daylight, members of parliament on the Human Rights Committee were blocked from accessing suspected ‘safe houses’ in Nkokonjeru, Kyengera and Nalukolongo last year.
Led by the committee chairperson Janefher Egunyu Nantume, the MPs drove to safe houses only to be stopped at the gate.
One soldier who identified himself as Vincent Kalibala, the in-charge of the Kyengera facility, told MPs that they could only be granted access by Kaka. He advised the committee to go to ISO offices in Nakasero and seek permission from Kaka.
Several people have in the past been grabbed off streets by gun wielding men in broad daylight. And one such person was New Vision crime reporter, Charles Etukuri.
WHO IS KAKA
According to Wikipedia, Colonel Frank Kaka Bagyenda, is a Ugandan retired military officer in the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF).
Effective January 2017, he is the Director General of the Internal Security Organisation, the Uganda government’s counter intelligence agency, responsible for providing national security intelligence to U policy makers.
Background and education
He was born in the western Uganda district of Ibanda in February 1952. He attended local schools before he was admitted to Makerere University in 1974. In 1977, he graduated from Makerere with a Bachelor of Commerce degree.
Civilian career
Following his graduation from Makerere, Bagyenda took up employment in the Ministry of Public Service. Later, he was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture. While there, he was posted to Masindi District, as an agricultural officer.
Military career
In 1981, Bagyenda joined the National Resistance Army (NRA), a rebel guerrilla outfit, led by Yoweri Museveni, who waged a bush war, between 1981 and 1986. He carried out covert operations for the NRA and was instrumental in the capture of Masindi Army Barracks by the NRA on February 20 1984.
To disguise himself from the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) soldiers, he adopted the name Kaka, dropping his birth names Frank Bagyenda. He served in the Ugandan military, rising to the rank of Major, before he retired at that rank in 1993.
His assignments in the military included being the commanding officer of a brigade based in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. He then served as head of the directorate of transport, and then as a member of the then Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), which today is the Chieftainancy of Military Intelligence (CMI).
He also served in Uganda’s Northern Region, where commanded a brigade in the early 1990s.
In retirement
In 1994, he was recalled and conscripted to assist the Rwanda Patriotic Front capture power in Kigali. He remained in Uganda however, engaging in the trucking business in Western Uganda, and setting up Panoma Hotel in Kalangala, in the Ssese Islands.
While in Kalangala, Bagyenda remained an active intelligence operative, playing a role in the disruption of illegal fishing on Lake Victoria. In 2013, he was promoted to the rank of Colonel, while in retirement.
In January 2017, he was appointed to head ISO, replacing Brigadier Ronnie Balya, who was appointed Uganda’s ambassador to South Sudan, based in Juba.
