By Kiddukanya Aloysius
Veteran YouTube bully Dean Lubowa Saava has always demolished big people on his YouTube and Tik Tok channels but he has spent much of this week on the defensive. He has had to defend himself after a group of political activists loyal to NUP founding president Moses Nkonge Kibalama came out to expose him as a double-faced actor.
A group of Kibalama’s assistants in NUP such as Gideon Tugume, Ssimbwa Kagombe and Del Filbert Omony have all given interviews to Kwezi Media group, an influential YouTube channel, claiming that their principal, the ailing Kibalama was last weekend abducted by men Saava lured him to meet at Namirembe Cathedral late in the evening.
Kibalama himself, who Saava says is very sick and has been under his care and custody for 8 months while receiving treating on orders of state house, also appeared on Kwezi platform and destroyed treacherous Saava.
Their claim is that Saava secretly booked Kibalama in a hotel in Rubaga division near Natete where he was ordered to stay under security surveillance while receiving strange treatment for 8 months. Saava says he did this as a good Samaritan after the NUP assistants of Kibalama reached out to him in February seeking help. He was ill and needed urgent expensive medication yet the group, which accuses Kyagulanyi of hijacking the NUP party from them, didn’t have money.
Saava says he contacted Gen Nalweyiso of state house who linked him to Mike Mukula who owns a hospital in Bugolobi. That Mukula was ordered to use his hospital to carry out the diagnosis and have Kibalama treated back to life. Kibalama offered to help state house fight and destroy Kyagulanyi, after getting well. The Kibalama group has a case in court seeking to force Kyagulanyi out of NUP, their own party which they handed over to him late 2020 (the danger with all this becoming public is that big state house officials like Nalweyiso are clandestine operators and hate all the public scrutiny Saava’s failure to sophisticate and keep quiet has caused them).
Saava says that Kibalama was found to have a blood clot among other life-threatening conditions. He is an old man in his 80s and served as bodyguard to former powerful UPC leader and vice president Paul Muwanga. Saava says if he hadn’t intervened Kibalama would be dead by now.
He claims to have used his personal money, Ugx800k per week, on his expensive medication for the last 8 months, a claim many have disputed knowing Saava’s low-income status. He says the assistants mismanaged Kibalama’s condition by buying for him pain killers of Ugx2k and that they blundered by medicating him without proper diagnosis until he personally intervened.
He says the Natete hotel where he had been confined, allegedly for his own security because the Kyagulanyi group planned to harm him, had to kick him out after Kibalama, who was supposed to live incognito, resorted to sneaking out to go meet some unknown people every now and then. Saava says this complicated life for him and for the hotel because they both feared to be held liable in case something wrong happened to Kibalama on one of those escape occasions. That he would sneak out and travel somewhere on boda-bodas.
Saava, who claims to have tried his best to pay for Kibalama’s hotel bills up to the point when he couldn’t pay it anymore, adds that the hotel bills had grown to Ugx102m which state house has to pay through the Mukula-Nalweyiso arrangement. He is angry that Kagombe & Co came and took away Kibalama from the hotel without consulting him.
Last weekend, Kibalama who had stopped sleeping at the Saava-secured hotel days earlier was lured into meeting a stranger who Saava had indicated was a doctor state house had sent to examine his state of health before taking him to meet president Museveni who was supposed to fund his relocation abroad for better treatment. Saava rang Kagombe and other people around Kibalama requiring them to prepare to go to Sheraton from where the state house doctor and some other people were supposed to pick and take him to meet the president.
After waiting several hours at Sheraton, the Kagombes were rang by Saava, who kept saying he was away in Kyotera Mutukula, asking them to relocate to Namirembe cathedral where the supposed state house doctor was waiting for them. Saava refused to give them the doctor’s phone number only describing for them the type of car he was in and the exact location at Namirembe he was waiting for them from.
Kagombe travelled with Del Omony and Mzee Kibalama on boda-boda and they indeed met the stranger at Namirembe who was driving in a green Pajero TX. They got into his car and the stranger went straight to shell Wandegeya where he parked and asked Kagombe to go photocopy for him some documents. Omony insisted to go with him. The idea was he would take them somewhere to have Mzee Kibalama examined and later on taken to meet the president. The duo was shocked to return from photocopying only to find the stranger gone. He had gone with Mzee Kibalama who was frail and not capable of walking alone unsupported.
Mzee Kibalama had no phone-he is simply too sick and those wanting to talk to him go through Kagombe’s number. He is his assistant in NUP but also uncle. So, they are very close. They were scared and unable to tell where the stranger had taken Kibalama. They rang Mr. Fixer but Saava was all of a sudden not picking. They rushed to Wandegeya police but the afandes refused to open the case against Saava saying the matter was very sensitive.
As they looked for him, photos emerged on Kyagulanyi’s socials showing how the NUP president had that same evening met and hosted Kibalama at his Magere home for some casual chat. All along Saava had become incommunicado and this left the Kagombes in total suspense. Towards 9pm, he returned their call making it clear he didn’t know what the stranger had done and where he had taken Kibalama. He tried to blame the Kagombes for acting negligently yet he expected them to keep guard of Mzee.
Kibalama was dumped by the same stranger to a lodge near his home in Buwambo-Matuga. The following day he spoke on Kwezi media and at length explained what happened. That the stranger, who we now know is an SFC captain allegedly working in CDF’s office, had taken him to Kavule where they met with NUP secretary general David Rubongoya.
That while inside there, the stranger and Rubongoya took advantage of his frailty (he is diabetic besides suffering from stroke and clot) and forced Kibalama to sign several documents. These are suspected to be the supposed consent judgment which is supposed to become the basis for his court case to be withdrawn against Kyagulanyi & group regarding the true leaders and owners of NUP. Kibalama explained that after signing the documents, Rubongoya put Ugx4m in two separate envelopes and gave to the SFC captain making it clear they will share with Kibalama.
Kibalama says after that he was put back into the TX and the SFC captain drove him to Magere where he found Bobi Wine waiting for him with a photographer. He didn’t know what all this was all about but remembers a promise of settling him off with Ugx1.5bn being made to him. After that he was driven and dumped at a lodge near his home in Buwambo-Matuga. He says out of the Ugx4m Rubongoya gave, the captain gave him only Ugx300,000/=.
All this information is now being used by the Kagombes to publicly attack Saava on several YouTube and Tik Tok platforms. They accused him of being a crook who was determined to make money on ailing Kibalama. They are demanding to know where Saava, who they say is a poor man always struggling to feed his family, got the money from to feed, treat and house Kibalama for 8 months. They claim that state house must have released money which they want Saava, a YouTuber who likes abusing big people who refuse to pay him off, to account for.
The Kagombes also claimed that Saava was just a money man who was determined to eat from both the state and NUP whose leaders he has always been attacking on his channel. They claimed that Saava was working for both the state and NUP and that publicly abusing Bobi Wine, Rubongoya and Senyonyi was a decoy meant to confuse the public.
They also claimed that he had made a deal with the trio regarding the NUP court case challenging Museveni’s win only to get annoyed and turn against them after they excluded him when sharing the money, the state gave them. A lot of online public debate was created and Ugandans seemed to have lost confidence in Saava who already doesn’t have a single friend because of his habit of attacking people and being one who can’t be advised. Many are avoiding him because he records every conversation or phone call he has with anyone.
Instead of keeping quiet, Saava went on the defensive trying to explain that he has no relationship with NUP and that he didn’t know that the SFC captain had connections with Kyagulanyi and Rubongoya. He maintained that his line strictly was about taking Kibalama to hospital for further tests as part of preparations to fly him to Europe on the president’s cost.
Ugandans on social media refused to believe this narrative and demanded that Saava discloses who the man in the green TX was and some demanded that he discloses the man’s phone number so that foot soldiers add him on numerous WhatsApp groups and begin abusing and interrogating him from there.
Saava went into over drive in a bid to demonstrate he has nothing to do with Kyaguklanyi. He insisted he had been betrayed by the SFC captain. He decided to ring the captain to discuss the Kibalama kidnap crisis on social media as the debate raged and recorded every phone conversation they had-as he always does. Like majority Kampala journalists, Saava records every phone call he makes and receives.
He recorded a full YouTube video and posted it on his channel-as if to revenge what the Kagombes/Tugumes had done to him days earlier. He put all the ugly exchanges he had with the SFC captain whose photos he eventually released-disclosing his full identity and names as Captain Noah Mugerwa. The way Saava humiliated the Captain by posting every private phone call they had been having left his allies and social media followers worried. Many feared he will either be arrested for mishandling such a sensitive operation and for negligently letting out such very sensitive information.
And more seriously many doubted if anyone is going to ever trust Saava or even talk to him be it on phone or face to face. People, even sources, love their privacy and no one is going to ever feel safe confiding in a journalist or anyone else who they know is recording and will one day declassify and play such sensitive information line on his YouTube channel for the consumption of his more than 60k followers and subscribers.
In the released phone conversations both Saava and Capt. Noah Mugerwa let out a lot of sensitive information as they abused and threatened each other. Whereas Capt. Mugerwa assured Saava he can do anything to anyone in Kampala, Saava assured him he can’t be intimidated and vowed to report all his dirty deals to general Muhoozi Kainerugaba the CDF in whose name he claimed the likes of Mugerwa and other rogue-minded officers had been extorting money.
Saava seemed nervous and scared after Capt. Mugerwa made it clear he was going to deal him in a manner that would make him regret the day he was born. The two men undressed each other and, in the process, exposed the state’s weaknesses when it comes to handling sensitive information. The captain told Saava he was a mufere with no name to protect. Saava, who likes intimidating his prey by claiming to be a personal friend of both Museveni and general Salim Saleh, claimed to have connections with big people in government who he vowed to use to destroy and ensure Mugerwa gets arrested and loses his job.
He also spoke about some of the money deals they did together, many of which he said went south. He also accused Capt. Mugerwa of conning him of more than Ugx10m besides impersonating big people in the CDF’s office.
Saying that his life was in danger, Saava, who had tried going to Gulu only to be ignored by general Saleh, stood on his two thin legs and then went on his knees right there in the video and requested the CDF to come to his rescue saying he was scared the likes of Capt. Mugerwa are going to harm him to suppress the very damaging information he has about them. He pleaded with the CDF to give him an appointment so that he can reveal to him full details of rogue-minded staff who are using his office in Mbuya to cut deals and make quick money.
Days earlier, Saava had fled his TV10 offices in Mengo after a raid by soldiers and policemen who came to enforce a UCC operation. He was accused of illegal broadcasting and all his equipment was confiscated up to this day. He these days records his videos from hidden places and not from his glittering offices anymore because the same is now crime scene as UCC hunts for him to stand trial for illegal broadcasting.
He had tried to intimidate UCC by claiming to be defaming and cyber harassing big people on orders of speaker Anita Among, general Salim Saleh and president Museveni who he keeps saying deployed him to fight corruption in public places by abusing big people in government offices who refuse to give him money to look after himself. When Saleh ignored him, Saava who had resorted to abusing UCC bosses and threatening to kill them for shutting down his illegal broadcasting centre, surrendered and sued for peace.
But even beyond UCC he has many life-threatening defamation cases in the civil courts of Uganda. There are more than 100 defamation cases which are waiting for him in the high court filed by people he has been defaming. There are high chances he will lose all of them because in Uganda, high court judges are always against media house and journalists in such defamation cases because they know even themselves are not safe from such attacks like Saava’s.
This is why big media houses like daily monitor, new vision, NBS and even NTV have always lost cases in the high court on defamation yet their stories are always carefully done unlike Saava’s which are openly and directly defamatory. He just needs to lose only 5 of the hundreds of cases waiting for him at the high court and he will be sentenced to Luzira and thereafter declared bankrupt. It’s unlikely anyone n government will be prepared to help him pay such court damages in hundreds of millions. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
