The Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has denied reports that there was a recent scheme by military and Uganda Police Force (UPF) officers to remove President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni from power.
Reports of a failed coup plot were fueled by a screenshot of a twitter conversation reportedly involving UPDF Spokesperson Brig Richard Karemire, Government Spokesperson Ofwono Opondo and President Yoweri Museveni’s Senior Press Secretary Don Wanyama.
In the conversation the three top officials have since dismissed as fake, the fabricators of a tweet under the handle of the UPDF Spokesperson, Karemire reportedly tweeted: “The Commander in Chief has set up a committee to investigate reports of an attempted coup involving a number of generals and senior officers in the Police. More details will be made public in the due course.”
To this, the fabricators further created a response purported to be from Ofwono Opondo who reportedly replied that “it is unfortunate that the people so close to the office are involved”, and another from Wanyama who reportedly added that “unbelievably family members are implicated”.
When the Twitter conversation that has been shared widely came to the attention of the UPDF, Brig Karemire rushed to dismiss it as fake and urged communications regulator Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) to start war against parody accounts used by wrong elements to cause alarm among members of the public.
“The public is asked to ignore a fake tweet going around alleging that a committee has been set up to investigate some Generals and Police Officers. We ask UCC to seriously look into this trend of fake accounts and false information they spread,” said the UPDF mouthpiece in a short social media statement.
Wanyama also assured Ugandans that the Museveni government would soon catch the gang behind the false news.
“But who are these people with so much time on their hands? Anyway, it won’t be long before we know and expose them. Guys, this is fake. It should be obvious,” Museveni’s senior press secretary said.
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