Two years ago, Agather Atuhaire and Dr Jimmy Spire Ssentongo were labelled witch-hunters.
They were accused of chasing clout, taking foreign money, and trying to bring down the former speaker, Anita Among.
This week, some of the people they accused of stealing public money during their social media campaign exposing mismanagement of resources at Parliament were arrested.
The most prominent one is Chris Obore, the director of Communications at Parliament, who was arrested together with seven other senior Parliament staff on charges of embezzlement, money laundering, and causing financial loss.
Prosecutors say Obore alone is accused of stealing Shs 5.253 billion. Together, the accused are blamed for a financial loss of more than Shs27 billion.
For Atuhaire and Ssentongo, the arrests are proof that what they said and wrote in 2024 was true all along.
On the night of February 24, 2024, Ssentongo, a Makerere University lecturer and cartoonist popularly known as Sspire, asked a simple question on his X handle: should Parliament and its MPs be exhibited?
Within 14 hours, more than 12,500 people had voted, and 95% of the respondents said yes.
Atuhaire, a lawyer and journalist who leads Agora Discourse, joined Ssentongo and lawyer Godwin Toko to run it. For weeks, they published leaked documents on X showing how money moved through Parliament.
Among the biggest claims was that Among had been allocated Shs3 billion for ten foreign trips between July 2023 and January 2024, trips that Atuhaire said never happened.
The activists also published documents showing that billions of shillings meant for the speaker’s donations and corporate social responsibility work were instead being paid into the personal bank accounts of junior Parliament staff, including Daniel Adilo and Emmanuel Okwii.
In one tweet, Atuhaire wrote that Obore had justified the disputed social contributions budget by pointing to a promised donation of solar panels for the maternity ward at Arua Hospital.
She asked a simple question under the hashtag #ParliamentCSRHeistUg: did Arua hospital ever receive the panels? It never did, she said.
Obore fights back
Obore, never one to take things lying down, did not take the accusations quietly. As Parliament’s spokesperson, he appeared repeatedly on television and radio talk shows to dismiss the claims.
When the Daily Monitor checked Atuhaire’s claims about Among’s foreign trips, Obore told the paper that while some trips to Russia and South Sudan were genuine, the rest were simply forgeries made up by people who wanted the speaker to look bad.
In one post responding to critics, Obore wrote on X: “Next time, don’t blame Speaker Anita Among without facts. Hatred and blackmail are bad politics.”
In another opinion piece for the Daily Monitor, Obore accused the activists of running what he called shamelessly persistent and disgusting propaganda against the institution and its leader.
He suggested Parliament’s critics were being used by outside interests who wanted to punish the country over unrelated disputes, including the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
She repeatedly dismissed the exhibition as a political witch-hunt driven by self-seeking local and foreign interests, and she blocked attempts by MPs to debate the claims on the floor of Parliament.
The public reaction to Ssentongo and Atuahire’s expose was not always kind.
Some people accused the duo of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign funding to organise anti-government protests, a claim Atuhaire and Ssentongo have denied.
In one post, Ssentongo said he had been warned that his life was in danger and was advised to leave the country.
He refused, posting instead that if they arrested him, the exhibition should continue anyway, because they could not arrest an idea.
Atuhaire said she had been followed and warned that her phone had been tapped. Parliament also reportedly sought Ssentongo’s communication records from the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC).
Later, when the two led a related campaign accusing MPs of extravagant spending, a section of Ugandans branded them “agents of homosexuals” and “foreign-funded saboteurs.
Natif, Tabz Vs Egesa: Inside the social media war surrounding Winstone Katushabe (our version)
Two years later… this week, Atuhaire, Ssentongo and Toko were vindicated after Obore and his colleagues were arrested over some of the issues they raised during the exhibition.
David Lewis Rungonya, the secretary general of the National Unity Platform (NUP), said the same facts that Atuhaire and Ssentongo exposed in 2024 had formed the basis of Obore’s prosecution, and that despite the harassment they faced, they had stood tall.
Activist Norah Kobusingye, who was arrested during the 2024 street protests demanding accountability at Parliament, said it had taken two years, but the sustained online and offline pressure had finally paid off. She said there was still a long way to go, but the moment deserved to be acknowledged.
Yet for Atuhaire and Ssentongo, the main architects of the exhibition, there has been no gloating or victory lap so far. They were called liars, witch hunters, foreign agents, and other names, but for the time being, they have taken it on the chin.
What are they cooking?
