Last week, the Weekend Monitor published an article I wrote about a false claim made by Parliament’s director of communications and public affairs, Chris Obore. (I write a weekly column for the paper as an independent contractor, and I have been doing so since September 2019.)
The false claim was that Helen Nakimuli, the Kalangala District Woman MP who died on April 19, had lost her seat in the January 15 presidential and parliamentary elections. All evidence suggests she was re-elected.
Mr Obore made the claim after I sent him a question via WhatsApp asking what happens to the taxpayer-funded car grant for an MP if they die weeks before being sworn in. “Does the government keep the money for whoever wins the by-election?” I asked.
Ms Nakimuli had just died. Mr Obore did not answer the question, saying it was “insensitive” and “irrelevant” because—in his own words—“The public already knows she lost her seat.”
Public money exists independently of the person who receives it. It has nothing to do with bereavement and the bereaved family.
On Wednesday, days after my article was published, I received an email from one of the editors at the Daily Monitor saying that Mr Obore had lodged a complaint that the article misrepresented what he and I discussed on WhatsApp.
Parliament’s communications department exists to communicate accurate information to the public. After making a false claim and doing nothing to set the record straight, Mr Obore reached out to the editor to make another false claim: my article misrepresented him.
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The article did not make any false accusations against Mr Obore. It cited three examples of false claims—one from Mr Obore and two others from the Encyclopedia Britannica and the BBC—saying that sometimes individuals and institutions who should know certain things do not.
It was a lesson for journalists to fact-check rigorously. And all three examples cited are verifiable. The BBC corrected its graphic about Uganda’s former presidents after OJ-UGANDA, the website I edit, did a fact-check. Britannica still has its false claim about Rwandan President Paul Kagame studying at Makerere University on its website.
Mr Obore’s face-saving complaint is undermined by his own words on WhatsApp. I shared the entire WhatsApp conversation with the Monitor editor to let the paper draw its own conclusion. Did my article misrepresent anything Mr Obore said? Was there anything misleading in my article about Mr Obore’s false claim? Did the writer make up anything?
OJ-UGANDA prides itself on being very open with readers, so the screenshots are shared below. The public deserves to see them.
Mr Obore, it seems to me, is using a public office to settle scores with a journalist asking legitimate public interest questions.
The office is being used to weaponise complaints to editors. But in doing this, Mr Obore is not targeting just one journalist; he is attacking the public’s right to know.
For someone with a background in journalism (the Daily Monitor, Evening Mail [defunct], Red Pepper), he should know. A question about public money is not a question about bereavement. He conflated the two, then complained to an editor that he was misrepresented.
The question I asked would be equally legitimate if asked about a living MP who vacated office. It was never answered. The public whose money the question was about still do not know.
A spokesperson provided false information. A journalist reported on it accurately. The spokesperson complained to the editor but did absolutely nothing to correct his own error and is using a face-saving complaint to suppress the error.
This, for me, is a classic example of using institutional weight to settle a score.
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🔴 Musaazi Namiti is the Founder and Editorial Director of OJ-UGANDA. He previously led the Africa Desk at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, worked for Globe Media Asia in Cambodia and writes a widely read column for Uganda’s Sunday Monitor. His work has been quoted by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report—not for playing it safe, but for saying what others will not.
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