By KT Reporters
All isn’t well for veteran journalist and Makerere-trained lawyer Charles Odongtho. He has for the last 15 months been working as a communications person at the Office of Prime Minister (OPM), directly under Robinah Nabbanja who unfortunately failed to have any liking for him from the very beginning. “There was a honeymoon of some sort but it didn’t last that long. The PM started realising the man wasn’t high performing to the levels she expected,” says a knowledgeable source.
At the OPM, there is the Communications Unit which currently is headed by former NTV journalist Jjingo Francis, who ordinarily is supposed to be Odongtho’s immediate boss. Odongtho considers himself the head of that unit, yet Nabbanja doesn’t recognise him as such. This has kept him the defacto head as the real power continues to be exercised by Jjingo Francis who sources say must have been born lucky. Nabbanja likes him much because she says he is easier to work with and she generally feels comfortable having around. He isn’t as sophisticated as Odongtho. This partly explains why Nabbanja, considered by many to be a Premier of the muntu wawansi, finds Jjingo more agreeable to have around.
To her, the man who heads her media unit is Jjingo Francis from whom Odongtho is supposed to get assignments and facilitation. Like some in the general public, Odongtho considers himself more senior and more prolific than Jjingo Francis, which unfortunately is not the way Nabbanja is looking at it.
Whereas Odongtho joined the OPM much earlier than Jjingo, Nabbanja was more comfortable having Jjingo head the unit and not Odongtho who many felt should be the unit’s natural head. Sources say that for the past few months, Odongtho has had to improvise to find work for himself as it increasingly became clear that Nabbanja wasn’t interested in him anymore.
As such, he hasn’t been comfortable being anywhere near her entourage within Uganda and abroad. So, he ends up doing PR errands for other Ministers at OPM like Lillian Aber, Alice Kaboyo, Kasule Lumumba, Hillary Onek and others. In fact, insiders say that Nabbanja isn’t supposed to know that he is still hanging around which is why caution has had to be exercises to ensure she doesn’t stumble on him anywhere in the corridors of the multi-storied OPM building or even in the lift.
WHAT HAPPENED:
Not so long ago, Odongtho’s one year local contract came to an end and Nabbanja reluctantly acquiesced to an extension of just three months which ended at the end of September. And when that happened, a decision was taken not to permit PS Dunstan Balaba to renew Odongtho’s local contract anymore (local means getting hired without involving public service at all). And this non-renewal was after the PM had repeatedly made it clear that Odongtho wasn’t the high-performance media personality or guru she thought he was when she used to admiringly see him shine on TV while doing talk show-hosting.
The September non-renewal of contract was followed by directives that Odongtho stops having access to the duty book according to which the weekly and monthly facilitation for the communications unit is allocated and expended. The only thing that hasn’t yet been withdrawn from Odongtho is the official government vehicle that was assigned to him upon joining the OPM.
His Shs7m monthly salary has since been stopped yet he continues hanging around in the hope that someone high up there in the top echelons of government will intervene and a renewal of contract of some sort gets decreed.
As all this is happening, poor Jjingo Francis is the man in the hotseat as Odongtho’s supporters inside OPM are menacingly looking at him as if benefiting from his fellow big-name scribe’s misery. Nabbanja supporters maintain that her discomfort with Charles Odongtho is performance and output-related and nothing personal at all. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com.
