Ugandan officials have lashed out at Rwanda’s foreign affairs minister of state in charge of the East African Community, Olivier Nduhungirehe, after he protested the deportation of MTN Uganda staff on social media. Ugandan security arrested and deported Annie Bilenge Tabura, a Rwandan national, together with Olivier Alexander Benoit Prentout, a French national and Elisa Muzzolini, an Italian-born French national.
Tabura was heading sales and distribution at MTN, Prentout was working as the chief marketing officer, while Muzzolini was heading the mobile money department. Following the deportation Nduhungirehe, using his Twitter handle, expressed dissatisfaction at the deportation of Bilenge.
“Apparently, walking and working in Uganda while Rwandan has become a crime. The only activities allowed for Rwandans in Uganda seem to be plotting against their country, training forces for the #RNC/#P5 and denouncing fellow Rwandans. This provocation will stop at some point,” Nduhungirehe tweeted.
The minister also claimed that Rwandans in Uganda were being arrested and being held incommunicado, tortured and given ‘unknown injections’. Nduhungirehe, formerly Rwandan ambassador to Belgium, was named on the Kigali cabinet in August 2017.
Nduhungirehe’s tweets have since attracted numerous responses from some public officials, including the Government spokesperson, Ofwono Opondo, as well as other Ugandans, wondering whether this was the minister’s parody account.
“Clearly, this minister is trying to run ahead of his times,” Opondo tweeted, before asking Nduhungirehe why he was stoking a fire yet he could be having relatives in Uganda.
National Resistance Movement lawyer, Hussein Kashillingi, asked Nduhungirehe whether he was a minister at the time Rwanda expelled Ugandans who were working with the state-owned newspaper, The New Times. Kashillingi also suggested that instead of protesting on social media, Nduhungirehe should have used the proper bilateral channels to have the matter resolved. Fresh details show that the deported MTN staff were involved in espionage and were also funding hostile campaigns again the Government.
Fanning hatred
Security sources revealed that the three staff were taking advantage of unpopular public concerns relating to telecom usage to fan hatred against the Government. The sources cited the suspects’ campaigns against Over The Top (OTT) tax and mobile money tax as some of the hate campaigns they pushed against the Government.
These two taxes caused public uproar and a group of youth led by Kyadondo East MP, Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine, took to the streets protesting the taxes. The Government responded by reducing the mobile money tax from 1% to 0.5% and restricted it only to withdrawals, but maintained the OTT tax. Operatives who have been following up the matter reportedly gathered exclusive data about the trio’s planning meetings in and outside the country.
The developments came six months after operatives from the Internal Security Organisation (ISO) raided an MTN data centre in Mutundwe, Kampala, over security concerns. During the ISO raid on July 2, 2018, they arrested the facility engineer, identified as Keefa Musasizi, who was later released without any charge.