She got aggregate 5 in PLE but dropped out of school after senior four. She worked as a bar maid in Bududa. She lived in a slum in Namuwongo where she did odd jobs. She was a prominent journalist at NTV loved for her hilarious sign out. She has seven children. She ran for Parliament on a shoe string budget, won and was appointed minister.
Agnes Nandutu’s life has had several intriguing twists and turns that it would make a good script for a thriller movie.
If such a movie were ever made, it would leave viewers in suspense in some parts but its end would be utterly disappointing if not annoying.
Nandutu has been ambitious since childhood and this trait comes out clearly in several media interviews she has given.
At NTV where she worked from 2008 to 2020, her bosses acknowledged her tenacity, innovativeness and drive to get a good story. They however despised her diction, grasp of the English language and at times, her overbearing character.
Some thought that she shouldn’t be voicing English language stories because her intonation and pronunciation of some words was deemed to be below the standards of the station that had marketed itself as a platform for the elite, A-class people.
She fought attempts to take her off English stories and won. Some of the bosses realized that she had been right after all. Her raw voice and “Uglish” accent won the station a number of viewers as did her cheeky sign out: A………….gnes..Nandutu.
Nandutu has never been shy or afraid to talk about her challenging background. She grew up in abject poverty in Bududa where the few clothes she had were hand me downs.
She dropped out of school in senior four, went to Kenya with her mother, returned to Uganda and worked as a bar maid in Bududa.
It is these tough conditions that steeled her for the life ahead. She joined Radio Uganda in the mid-1990s were she earned Shs 16,000 per month. In the early 2000s, she joined Impact FM and started simultaneously vending stories for Daily Monitor.
In 2008, she joined NTV where, during the job interview, she told her interviewer, Betty Dindi that she did not have the required academic qualifications.
“This is all I have,” she said waving her certificate from an obscure media training institution. Smitten by her boldness and sincerity, Dindi gave her the job.
Once she settled and established herself at NTV, there was no stopping her. She covered the Parliament beat where MPs and journalists could not ignore her.
During that time, she also became close to former speaker Rebecca Kadaga. The two would swap stories late into the night, Nandutu often telling her which journalists or MPs did not like the speaker.
In one of their conversations, according to someone who observed their close friendship, Nandutu confided in Kadaga that she had stopped in senior four and was planning to go back to school.
“Oh, that is a good thing. I will support you,” Kadaga, seemingly surprised, said.
Kadaga always ensured that Nandutu was part of her entourage when she travelled out of the country. Nandutu earned handsomely from these trips and bought a piece of land in Namugongo where she started constructing a house.
Kadaga also supported Nandutu’s bid to become president of the Uganda Parliamentary Press Association (UPPA) cementing their friendship further.
In her new but powerful role, Nandutu became the unofficial watchdog of parliament press for Kadaga.
Whenever she learned that a journalist was doing to a critical piece on the speaker, she would call and plead with the journalist to drop the story. When this did not happen, she would report the journalist to Kadaga and claim that the journalist was being used by a big shot to fight the speaker.
In 2013, when The Observer did a critical piece about a needless foreign trip that Kadaga had undertaken where hundreds of millions of shillings had been spent, the speaker became very livid. She turned to Nandutu.
Nandutu reportedly told her that the journalists who did the story were pro-Mbabazi and were on his payroll. Kadaga and Amama Mabazi, at this time, were on a war path.
Kadaga asked Nandutu ‘what could be done’ to stop The Observer.
“Suspend their reporters from Parliament,” Nandutu advised. “It will be a tough lesson.”
The Observer’s parliament reporters, Sulaiman Kakaire and David Tash Lumu (now at The New Vision) were thus shown the exit. Protestations from the management of The Observer did not yield any fruits.
Fall out with Kadaga
Yet like the saying goes, “You do not placate a tiger by feeding it your own flesh.” Soon that tiger will turn against you and that is what Kadaga did.
In media interviews, Nandutu has said Kadaga turned against her after she did critical stories about the House.
That was only part of the reason.
The real reason is when Nandutu started “passing off” as a speaker after she started doing a TV show named; “People’s Parliament.”
Sources said this angered Kadaga who said there was only one people’s parliament in Uganda which had one speaker; that was her.
She reached out to NTV and tried to nip the programme in the bud but management stood its ground.
She then decided to deal with Nandutu personally with Francis Jjingo, a fellow NTV reporter and Yasin Mugerwa, a Daily Monitor reporter acting as collateral damage. Jjingo and Mugerwa had done critical pieces on Parliament which had rubbed Kadaga the wrong way.
After the 2016 elections, Kadaga instructed Chris Obore the director of communications at Parliament to bar the trio from reporting at Parliament.
For Nandutu, she was told Parliament had changed its rules for journalists and was only admitting those with at least a degree. Since she only had a certificate, she was not eligible to cover the House.
For Jjingo and Mugerwa, they were told that they had covered the House for long and it was time for them to give chance to new, fresh faces from their organizations.
Nandutu worked the phones and contacted lawyer Isaac Ssemakadde to see if a case could be lodged against Parliament.
She also reached out to some of the journalists, she had previously undermined before Kadaga, asking that they make “some noise” on her behalf.
Kadaga stuck to her guns and Nandutu eventually gave up. She returned to her NTV job and plotted her way to Parliament.
In 2017, she sat for A-levels and passed. She now had the minimum qualification to contest for Parliament. In 2020, she asked for leave from NTV to contest in the NRM primaries for the Bududa Woman seat. She emerged third.
She contemplated giving up and returning to her day job but decided to contest as an independent. She won in 2021 defeating the incumbent and NRM flagbearer Justine Khainza.
In June 2021, she was appointed minister of state for Karamoja, marking a complete turnaround for someone who had worked in a bar and washed clothes in the slums of Namuwongo to eke a living.
She now regularly straddled the marbled floors of State House and rubbed shoulders with the people who mattered.
That moment however did not last long. Last year, she was accused of partaking in the iron sheets that were meant for the people of Karamoja.
She was arraigned in court and in March, Museveni sacked her as minister.
On April 30, the UK slapped sanctions on her over her alleged role in the Mabaati saga.
Like someone commented on social media, “Nandutu had dropped to the bottom of a very deep pit.”
Will she use her resilience to get out of this pit?
