Musaazi NAMITI
A photo that appears to show President Yoweri Museveni posing with a man named Stephen Nuwagaba has raised authenticity questions as it appears to show the president wearing a ring on his left hand.
In publicly available photos, Mr Museveni does not wear a ring and wears a wristwatch on his right hand.
The photo accompanied a story published by the Independent magazine, which alleged that Mr Nuwagaba calls himself a brigadier general in the UPDF, lives in the president’s official residence in Nakasero and “introduces himself to people as a Senior Presidential Advisor on Intelligence and Security.”
OJ-UGANDA could not get a comment from the UPDF as the phone number listed on its website returned the message: “The telephone number you have called is not available at the moment.”
The Independent’s article also alleged that Mr Nuwagaba blackmails vulnerable public officials by threatening to report their alleged wrongdoing to the president and that those who reject his blackmail get fired or jailed—or both.
The magazine did not interview Mr Nuwagaba for its article.
While the Independent’s photo shows a ring on Mr Museveni’s hand, none of the hundreds of publicly available photographs that OJ-UGANDA reviewed shows that detail.
A Google reverse image search done by OJ-UGANDA revealed the Independent’s version is indexed by the search engine.
In an interview, Andrew Mwenda, a former journalist who founded the Independent and posted the article on social media, told OJ-UGANDA via WhatsApp: “Let me find out about the ring. I have never seen him [President] with one.”
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Mr Mwenda did not respond to the question as to whether the Independent verified the authenticity of the photo.
However, he said Mr Nuwagaba later shared another photo in which Mr Museveni was not wearing a ring.
“That is the original picture I had, and it didn’t have a ring. Someone (the boy himself) could be manipulating things to change the story,” he said.
The Independent’s article was also accompanied by photos purportedly showing Mr Museveni and his wife Janet posing with Mr Nuwagaba.
The State House is no stranger to scams. A former Bukedde newspaper editor, Geoffrey Kulubya, told a content creator recently that he was once invited to a meeting where Mr Museveni complained about photos that turned out to be photoshopped.
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In his July 4 address to the nation, Mr Museveni himself said: “A year or two back, Hon Fred Byamukama helped Uganda to expose the criminals that had turned the State House into a mafia centre. In order to have your document brought to the President, you had to pay shs30 million as a bribe. He reported the matter to me and we arrested the gangs.”
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