By Jako David Waluluka
Makerere University’s 91st Guild President, James Churchill Ssentamu, a promising new breed of Ugandan youthful leaders, is facing a family allegiance storm in a teacup over his official meeting with President Yoweri Museveni in his capacity as the guild president.
Churchill is the son of Fred Nyanzi, head of mobilization for the National Unity Platform (NUP), Uganda’s leading local opposition party, led by his uncle Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, also known as Bobi Wine
It should be noted that Churchill, pursued his successful dream to become the guild president, on an independent ticket after being frustrated by his own clan mates who lead NUP.
What initially begun as a politically mature move in the aforementioned capacity at the launch of the
The Makerere University Research and Innovation Week (RIWEEK 2025) has triggered a wave of unwarranted negative reactions, including obscene comments from NUP members on various social media platforms.
Amidist all this cacophony, his own father Fred Nyanzi, uncharacteristic of a family head, released a video in which he castigated his son for having ‘dined’ with a ‘murderous’ dictator, which to him was an abomination.
Throwing out all basic family value commonsense, exhibited his aloof selfishness by threatening to disown him if he didn’t apologize or lest relinquish the guild presidency.
Many a sane parent would have been proud that Churchill against all odds, managed to singularly scoop the presidency with a solid 3,459 votes,
Indeed, Churchill’s official presidency, would be the nearest that his whole family tree will ever get to the same post in Uganda as a country.
Blinded by his quest to be relevant in the heat of the storm, Fred Nyanzi, has dragged his family into a unity abyss that will never be reclaimed.
Churchill, should not relent to such street talk for probably he was named after Sir Winston Churchill, a British statesman, orator, and author and its greatest war time prime minister and hero, who never was one to be intimidated .
One may wonder if a family meeting that includes Churchill’s mother and immediate adult siblings, arrived at this daft decision of disowning him.
One would bet that his late grandfather Ssentamu snr, would have been proud of his grandson’s achievement.
Instead of playing the disowning and resignation threat card and to appease the NUP clout, Fred Nyanzi, would have sat down his younger brother and now bread winner, Bobi Wine, to initiate a conversation, that would win Churchill back into the party fold.
