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It is approaching December 5th, 2003 and a meeting of Commonwealth leaders is due in Abuja, Nigeria.
President Yoweri Museveni, accompanied by his State Minister for Foreign Affairs in charge of International Affairs, Tom Butiime, has travelled to Norway.
He is on an official visit from where he will be travelling to London, before going to Abuja.
Butiime is to return to Uganda for other state duties.
Meantime, the Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, James Wapakhabulo, has travelled to London on an official trip from where he is to travel to Abuja, and arrive before President Museveni.
However, Wapa falls seriously ill and is hospitalised in London. Foreign Affairs decides that Butiime should travel to Abuja instead.
Butiime asks for per diem to pay his hotel bills there.
Reasonable enough, since he won’t be sleeping in the conference hall.
Instead of getting fresh money in Kampala, the guys at Foreign Affairs send Uganda's High Commissioner to London, Mr. Sisye Kiryapawo, to Wapakhabulo's deathbed. As Wapa is gasping his last breath, Kiryapawo visits him to "collect Government money."
The reasoning is that since the minister is not travelling to Abuja, the per diem should be given to Butiime instead.
However when President Museveni arrives in London, he is not told about the fate of his foreign minister.
When Butiime is told of where it came from, he rejects the per diem and instead travels to Kampala, hoping to raise money from the cash-starved ministry headquarters. But in Kampala, the Permanent Secretary, Onen and his stand-in, Ambassador Mugume, are both absent and with them are the "keys" to the "vaults."
As a stranded
Butiime looks around for money to travel and arrive in Abuja before his President, as protocol requires, Kiryapawo travels to Abuja with Joan Kakwenzire, the latter pissed by the callousness with which government had taken money from its Deputy Prime Minister on his deathbed.
In Abuja, Kiryapawo goes straight to his counterpart, Joan Rwabyomere. Pulling a khaki envelope from his jacket, Kiryapawo gives the money to Rwabyomere telling her it is Butiime's. Rwabyomere cannot understand why she should be a custodian of Butiime's money. Is it because they come from the same tribe? However, it seems Kakwenzire has tipped her off that the quid had been grabbed from a dying Wapa, and she rejects it.
Back in London, Wapa has to look for resources to pay his medical bills.
How does he do it, and how does he return to Uganda only to die a few weeks later, a frustrated man? More on this coming soon! |
