By our reporter
Arua Municipality MP Ibrahim Abiriga was on Friday evening gunned down together with his bodyguard near his home in Kawanda.
The legislator will forever be remembered for his love and obsession for the ruling party NRM, and its leader Yoweri Museveni.
He aspired to show his support for his party and specifically President Yoweri Museveni by wearing yellow coloured attires all the time and driving yellow cars.
He came to the limelight after campaigning for the lifting of the constitutional age limit of 75-years to allow Museveni qualify to run again in 2021.
Who was Ibrahim Abiriga?
Abiriga was born in 1956 in 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 Sudan.
In exile, he was part of the formation fighting the new successive governments in Kampala. One such group was the UNRF.
In 1986, the 1,200 strong UNRF joined Museveni’s NRA and were mostly formed into the NRA’s 73rd Battalion.
Abiriga who had also joined the NRA in 1986 rose to become the 2nd Division Administration Officer (DAO). He served in that position from 1988 to 1990 when his active military career informally ended.
A decade later, Ibrahim Abiriga contested for the Madi Okollo parliamentary seat but lost to the opposition candidate. Consequently, President Yoweri Museveni appointed Abiriga to the position of Resident District Commissioner (RDC) of Arua District where he was known for his notoriety.
He held the job for 12 years until he was transferred to Yumbe in the same position in 2014. A few months into the position, Abiriga resigned to join elective politics and became an MP for Arua municipality.
Abiriga was the heir and surviving eldest son of his father who had 34 children. He died aged 62.
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