KAMPALA – The Senior Presidential Advisor on Media Relations, Mr. John Nagenda has lashed out at Government spokesperson Mr. Ofwono Opondo for unprofessionally poking at his counterpart Fred Enanga, the police spokesperson for “simply reporting what he had been told to report”.
Mr. Nagenda’s comments followed a bickering, after both government and the central bank entirely dismissed police reports that extra money was discovered to have been printed and sneaked into the country.
The presidential advisor who said he was underwhelmed by Mr. Opondo’s unprofessional behavior said embarrassing Mr. Enanga was not a solution to the problem.
Mr. Nagenda said in his column, ‘One Man’s Week’ that runs in the Saturday Vision:
“I was underwhelmed by government spokesman Ofwono Opondo trying to frighten the very professional police spokesman Fred Enanga, for simply reporting what he had been told to report. It won’t help solve the problem! Does it matter if the public know? Yes. For whose lives spent in cleaning up of Uganda are we dealing with more than 30 years after successful Five year Bush War which the Movement,” he said.
He instead advised the parties involved to interest themselves in finding out whether unauthorized money was printed or not.
On Monday 17 June, Mr. Enanga told journalists that CID had taken over investigations to find out how the extra cash was printed and sneaked into the country.
BoU and OPondo, embarrassingly asked Mr. Enanga and the entire communication department in police to apologise, claiming they were misleading Ugandans about nonexistent extra currency in the economy.
The money was allegedly shipped into the country on the same chartered flight that carried official central bank currency notes in April.
But in separate press conferences held in Kampala on Tuesday, both BoU governor Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile and government spokesperson Ofwono Opondo said no extra money was printed and the investigations are not on currency printing but on illegal cargo found on the said chartered plane.
Mr. Nagenda has also bashed at the BoU communications director Ms. Charity Mugumya, accusing her of incompetency and not suiting the job of the directorship at the status of a Central Bank.
“Who in our committee of the Central Bank gave this lady a directorship of communications, of all jobs ?, the President advisor Nagenda wondered.
