KAMPALA: Reports indicated that Col Abiriga’s vehicle, a yellow beetle was intercepted by two men who opened fire while riding on a motorcycle. The colonel died together with his bodyguard in a shooting near Energo fuel station in Kawanda, just close to his Kampala home.
They were killed by unknown people riding on a boda boda at about 6:30pm on Friday evening.
The shooting comes just a day after President Yoweri Museveni assured Ugandans that the government will defeat masterminds of the new wave of what he called urban terrorism activities like kidnaps and murder. Museveni added that the government had put in place mechanisms to build the intelligence gathering capacity in towns and along major highways.
Col Abiriga was born in 1956 from the West Nile region. In 1971, he joined the Uganda Army (UA) and mostly served as the Manager of Pakuba Lodge in the present-day Murchison Falls National Park. Like most of the ‘Amin soldiers’, after the overthrow of Iddi Amin in 1979, he fled to Congo and later Sudan. In exile, they formed fighting groups to fight the new successive governments in Kampala. One such group was the UNRF under now Prime Minister, Gen. Moses Ali. Abiriga’s blood relative, Gen. Bamuze was the UNRF Chief of Staff. He later joined the NRA in 1986.
Col Abiriga served as the Resident District Commissioner for Arua District for 12 years since 2001 before he was transferred to Yumbe in the same position. He resigned from the post to contest for a parliamentary seat, which he won in February 2016.
Col Abiriga was among the initiators of the move to amend the Constitution to remove Article 102b so as to have the 75-year upper age limit for the president removed. It is expected that he will be buried on Monday 11th June at his home in Arua.
The Express News
