Pastor Jackson Ssenyonga has been accused of defrauding millions of shillings from fellow pastors.
The pastors who hail from Greater Luweero accuse the Christian Life Church lead preacher and colleagues of conning them their hard earned money through his ‘bye bye biwempe’ campaign.
“In the year 2005 we saw the start of the programme “Bye bye Biwempe”, where Pastor Jackson Ssenyonga made a countrywide reach out cry to all pastors. He claimed to have gotten a revelation from God to lead and build for us iron roofed churches to do away with all papyrus churches where he named the exercise “Bye bye Biwempe”. The conference was held at Nakivubo Stadium,” Pastor Moses Akampulira, wrote on behalf of Luweero pastors.
” In this case every pastor/stakeholder or beneficiary was supposed to pay a fee of 20,000/= for registration and each and every person was to be responsible for his/her own upkeep during the conference including transportation.”
Pastor Akampulira further noted that up to date, no single church in Luweero has benefitted from Ssenyonga’s campaign yet he collected money from them.
” Their action has left us depressed and disowned by our leaders who would otherwise serve as examples.”
Pastor Akampulira also revealed that even before the recently concluded 2021 polls, Pastor Ssenyonga recalled them to his Bwaise Church saying President Museveni wanted to meet them.
“We sold our goats, chicken etc and made it to Bwaise.The president came and met us briefly and thanked us for the support etc. In our presence Pastor Ssenyonga told the president that all this was under him that we were good people but we had a lot of challenges especially poverty.”
” The president said he was giving us cows to improve our wellbeing but because those were times of foot and mouth disease (Kalusu) he said he had turned the cows into money which he handed over to Pastor Ssenyonga and we all thanked him.”
But to the pastors’ dismay, when the President left, Pastor Ssenyonga took all the money without giving them their share. They went back to their churches empty handed.
“Similarly on a third occasion some agents again related to Ssenyonga and other pastors approached us in Greater Luwero promising to help us get pineapple juice squeezing machines coordinated by Operation Wealth Creation and we were made to pay at least 100,000/= for a start but until today we have seen nothing.
“We are even starting to think that such bad treatment and continued lies could be one of the reasons why NRM popularity failed in the just concluded elections. Pastors lost confidence and did not mobilize normally,” Pastor Akampulira asserted.
Now the enraged pastors want President Museveni and all relevant authorities to intervene so that justice is prevailed.
” Two journalists and four pastors from Butaleja have already been arrested following the kidnaps by Pastor Ssenyonga, plain clothed army, men and the pastor’s aide a one wasswa. Tortures and assault cases have already be registered under SD Rf. 23/13/04/2021 at Kasangati Police Station. This is all because of the running link on www.newsday.co.ug where the Pastor is accused of pocketing millions of money donated by President Museveni to help the country wide churches.”
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