🟥 Nixon Agasirwe’s arrest

What this  means for former IGP Kayihura

ANALYSIS | IAN KATUSIIME | The arrest of Nixon Agasirwe, former commander of the Uganda Police Special Operations Unit, has opened a trail that leads to his long-time boss, the former Inspector General of Police (IGP), Gen. Kale Kayihura—placing the retired general in the crosshairs of a potential criminal investigation.

Nixon was apprehended in connection with the 2015 assassination of Joan Kagezi, an Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, who was gunned down in cold blood in Kampala.

His arrest followed a damning testimony from Daniel Kiseka Kiwanuka, a former UPDF soldier convicted of Kagezi’s murder, who named Nixon as the mastermind behind the attack. Kiwanuka has since been sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The murder of the top prosecutor shocked the nation on a quiet evening when its news rang through Kampala like an earth tremor. On that grim night, Kayihura promptly arrived on the scene minutes after the shooting.

Grace Akullo, former Director of the Criminal Investigations Directorate also arrived at the scene moments later. This was the modus operandi of the Kayihura era—the police boss hovering over a crime scene—with his top lieutenants in tow.

The arrest of Nixon, an erstwhile right-hand man of Kayihura, has unraveled what looks like a crime drama involving once powerful senior security officials in a murder that took ten years to resolve.

The development has now turned the attention on Kayihura who ran the Uganda Police Force for 12 years, exponentially growing its budget and personnel tenfold, rolling out schemes like Crime Preventers, spying on opposition politicians, and running the security apparatus.

He was essentially the man President Museveni turned to, to thwart any direct challenge to his power. Midway through his term around 2013, the Police budget had blossomed to Shs330bn provoking envy from other security agencies like Internal Security Organisation (ISO) and Chief Military Intelligence (CMI).

Nixon’s power

At the height of Kayihura’s power as police chief, Nixon was the de facto second in command coordinating operations for his boss in Kampala and beyond. Nixon’s Special Operations Unit was a well-oiled machine with several commandos, cars and ammunition ready to swing into action at a moment’s notice. At the time, the deputy IGP was Okoth Ochola who later succeeded Kayihura. Ochola is now retired.

Kayihura mentored Nixon and handed him key assignments owing to his loyalty to him, sources in security say. A giant of a man with a mean look and a swagger that came with proximity to power made Nixon, a school dropout, one of the most feared men in the Uganda Police Force.

But in a shocking revelation, while appearing in an interview with NBS TV, Kayihura denied Nixon ever reporting to him. “Nixon had never been near my office as an aide,” he said. Kayihura also described Kagezi’s murder as “a big shock” saying he worked closely with the late assistant DPP.

There were numerous reports about Nixon and his Unit’s alleged involvement in a range of criminal activities. The Special Operations Unit, alongside the Police Flying Squad, led by Herbert Muhangi, were the core components of the Force for about seven years until Kayihura was relieved of his duties in 2018.

Nixon and Muhangi were the twin towers at the helm of the Uganda Police operations under Kayihura. Muhangi is still off the hook but the new twist means the situation regarding the Kagezi case remains fluid in spite of a conviction.

In 2017, Nixon was hunted down by CMI operatives and later charged at the General Court Martial with unlawful possession of ammunition. He was later charged alongside Muhangi and other senior officers of the Kayihura era.

The other officers were Col Ndahura Atwooki, the former Director of Crime Intelligence, Richard Ndaboine, the former head of the Cyber Crime Unit; Patrick Muramira, an operative in the Flying Squad, and Muyomba Kitagenda, an operative with the Flying Squad, and Jonas Ayebaza, a former Personal Assistant to IGP Kayihura.

The clamp down on Nixon and his cohorts happened as the curtains fell on Kayihura’s reign. Nixon spent four years on remand at Makindye military barracks, only getting bail in 2022.

During his time out on bail, Nixon tried to appeal to some influential power brokers to have his charges dropped but it was no smooth sailing for the former police top honcho. In March 2024, the military court dropped the charges.

The swoop on Nixon places Kayihura squarely back in the sights of Ugandan security—once a domain of his—as Museveni’s most trusted security aide and an army General who fought in the war that brought Museveni to power nearly forty years ago.

Kayihura was widely criticised for the brutality that he meted out on the opposition, the unlawful arrests, the torture, and police killings of protestors. He was also skewered for profiling of muslims in terrorism cases. But he also faced scrutiny for parading suspects before the media after arrests. As IGP, Kayihura was a camera-loving official who used the media to advance his agenda.

In spite of the many criticisms, the former IGP had allies and supporters who believed in his leadership at the Uganda Police Force.

“He was able to influence politics, attracted university students to join the police, grew the force budget, and created a political platform along his policing duties,” Jude Kagoro, a Research Fellow at Bremen University in Germany told The Independent when Kayihura was retiring from the army two years ago. Kagoro is a lecturer at Bremen University’s Institute for Intercultural and International Studies.

“Because of that visibility, people saw it as a place to join and build a career including young graduates from well-to-do families,” said Kagoro who has written extensively about Kayihura’s policing strategy and militarisation in Uganda.

This was the basis for Kayihura starting a police university located in Bwebajja on Entebbe Road.

“His idea was to build a critical mass and bolster command responsibility among a new cadre of intellectually refined police officers,” Kagoro added.

But Nixon was not that among that crop of officers. He belonged to a different lot. At the time Nixon enjoyed the trappings of power, Uganda Police Force entered into alliances with dubious outfits like Boda Boda 2010, an association of boda boda riders that were meant to aid law enforcement with intelligence gathering. According to sources knowledgeable on these operations, Nixon was at the heart of such dealings in his role as Special Operations Unit commander.

Boda Boda 2010 mobilised pro-Kayihura protestors who stormed Nakawa Court in August 2016 and prevented the hearing of a case where Kayihura as IGP had been summoned on torture charges. Kayihura and other senior officers like Nixon had been summoned over torture of Dr. Kizza Besigye. Richard Mafabi, the chief magistrate, who had issued the summons died mysteriously two months later.

Exposure for Kayihura

Nixon’s arrest thus creates exposure for his former boss who now prefers to remain in oblivion. It comes at a time when Kayihura appears to have completed his “rehabilitation” as it is called in NRA parlance—the period when a cadre fallen from grace has gone through the cold and is slowly being returned to the fold.

In December last year, President Museveni met Kayihura and his family; his wife and children at Rwakitura, the president’s upcountry home. The meeting sent tongues wagging on what it portended for the retired General.

In 2023, Kayihura doffed his UPDF uniform in a colourful ceremony where he was the most senior officer. However, even a week before his retirement, Kayihura learnt that he was still being haunted by his legacy as IGP. The Constitutional Court in a unanimous verdict, upheld charges of torture filed against the former police chief and other senior officers. The case was filed in 2016, two years before he left his position.

Seven years after he left the highpoint of his career, Kayihura is still getting heat from his time: from court cases, international sanctions, to former subordinates. In 2019, he was sanctioned by the US for torture against Museveni’s political opponents and banned from travelling to the country. Kayihura’s wife and children were not spared by the US sanctions.

Kayihura was sanctioned under the US Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2016. Under this law, the U.S. “imposes tangible and significant consequences on those who commit serious human rights abuse or engage in corruption”.

Kayihura’s retirement from the UPDF in 2023 was the end of a circuitous journey that started in 1982 when Kayihura joined the National Resistance Army in a guerrilla war that toppled the UNLA government in 1986.

Kayihura first received attention when Museveni put him in charge of the Special Revenue Protection Service, an anti-corruption unit at Uganda Revenue Authority in the 1990s. The tax body was groaning under the weight of greed by its officers and Kayihura’s tactics seemed to impress Museveni who wanted to see a semblance of a crackdown at the new organisation.

But it was his ultimate appointment as IGP in 2005 that everyone stood up and took notice. Kayihura took the reins at a time when the police played second fiddle to the army in Uganda’s power politics.

He established himself as a high handed enforcer who was not shy to associate with the ruling party and do its bidding as the political environment became more fragmented. He earned Museveni’s trust but he also made countless foes in his quest for power.

The mysterious killing of AIGP Andrew Felix Kaweesi in 2017, then Police spokesperson, seemed to be the start of his troubles. Kaweesi, a fast rising officer, was shot dead a few metres from his home in Kulambiro, Kampala on a rainy morning. His bodyguard and driver were also killed.

At Kaweesi’s vigil, President Museveni told Kayihura to “clean up the police.” A year later, Kayihura was fired in a Twitter post by the President.

Kayihura was later arrested in dramatic fashion—in an operation commandeered by Lt. Gen. Kayanja Muhanga, then second division commander of the UPDF.

He was picked up from his home in Lyantonde district, about 70km from the second division headquarters in Mbarara and placed on a chopper bound to Kampala. He was detained at Makindye barracks and subjected to the same brutal tactics he had made a staple of his time as police boss.

Kayihura was charged with failing to protect war materials and repatriating Rwandan refugees back home. Kayihura’s reported links with the Rwandan government also riled many in the Ugandan security establishment because of the two countries’ frosty relations.