Who is Jimmy Akena Obote? Flash Uganda Media looks at his biography, age, wife, family, tribe, relationship with former late President Milton Obote, Miria Kalule Obote, MP Betty Amongi, Eddie Engena Maitum and Tony Akaki, early life and education of the current President of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC).
Jimmy Akena Obote is a popularly known politician in Uganda. He is the current Member of Parliament for Lira Municipality under the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC).
He is also the current President of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) political party that Obote Milton founded.
Early life and Education
Jimmy Akena Obote was born on September 25 1967 at Mulago hospital to the former late President Milton Obote who died in 2005 aged 79 and his mother, Miria Kalule Obote, who was also a politician.
He has fathered many children and is married to MP Betty Amongi of Oyam South County with whom he has two daughters.
Both parties are in their second marriages. MP Akena divorced Gladys, his first wife, with whom he had two children. MP Amongi, who has two children with academician Dr James Ochwa in the United States, also divorced him.
Akena belongs to the Oyima clan and is from Akokoro. He has three brothers; two older; Eddie Engena Maitum and Tony Akaki and one younger brother.
Akena is a devout Christian. Until recently, he was known as the ‘dread-locked Rasta’. He attributed not trimming his hair to a biblical vow traced to the Book of Numbers where one shouldn’t let the razor touch their head until the vow was fulfilled.
Akena spent the first five years of his life in exile after fleeing Uganda. They escaped to Kenya following the first coup in 1971 against his father who was the second President of Uganda. However, they were apprehended and sent to jail, causing Akena to be imprisoned before making five years.
While in prison, they received an invitation from Idi Amin to a dinner. Amin instructed their mother, Miria to choose between letting her or her children go. She chose to allow her children to go. She eventually escaped and joined them in Tanzania.
Akena grew up in Tanzania with his uncle Masette Kuuya, who was teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam at the time.
His first exile lasted from 1971 to 1980. They arrived in Mbarara, Uganda, on May 27, 1980, and immediately organised a massive rally in Bushenyi. And that’s when Akena decided that he wanted to join the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC).
He kept changing schools due to the circumstances that existed. He first went to Nakasero pre-school, then Bunge primary school in Tanzania, and then International School of Tanganyika still for primary education.
He later joined senior one at Namasagali College in the Kamuli area just before the 1980 elections. Soon after, he moved to further his education in Kenya. Akena enrolled at Imani School in Thika, Kenya, where he attended his O-levels from 1981 to 1984.
Then, in 1984, he went to King’s College Taunton (UK) where he partially did his A-level before transferring and completing at Science Tutors in Kenya after being discovered by the coup d’état that overthrew his father, which forced him to travel back to Nairobi.
After Obote was ousted in a military coup for the second time in July 1985, the family broke up. Akena spent time in Nairobi working for a company that sold veterinary supplies before relocating to Lusaka, Zambia in 1992.
Business troubles in the company began in 1994 and 1995 which forced the corporation to cut back. Akena had the option of returning to Nairobi, but he chose to stay in Lusaka with his father.
While Akena and his younger brother resided in Lusaka with their father, the other two children were in Nairobi where their mother, Miria resided.
Akena wrote a little bit and contributed to Radio Rhino International, a radio station based in Germany that specialized in Ugandan topics, in addition to caring for his ageing father, which he describes as full-time work. He stayed in exile for almost twenty years and returned to Uganda in April 2005.
Career and Professional Work Experience
Jimmy Akena replaced Ogwal as Lira Municipality MP during the 2006 campaign and General Elections and has consistently won the 2011, 2016 and 2021 Parliamentary representative elections.
There was scepticism in certain quarters following Akena’s landslide victory in the 2006 general elections. Some saw the victory as a “thank you” to the late Dr Obote, the UPC’s founding father who passed away on October 11, 2005, months before the election.
However, Akena rejected this assertion claiming that a sympathy vote did not play a role in the elections. His second win in the 2011 general elections cleared away the scepticism and showed that he was independent of his father in terms of popularity and political clout.
Olara Otunnu was elected as UPC’s President on 14th May 2010 replacing Miria Obote. He was however later ousted by party members and replaced by Akena Obote on 2 July 2015.
In 2015, the High Court ruled that Akena was not the legal UPC president and removed him from office. However, Akena contested the ruling before the Court of Appeal along with the party’s electoral commission.
Until his appeal was decided, he requested that the Court of Appeal delay the High Court’s decision. While his appeal was being decided, Mr Akena continued to serve as UPC president.
Akena’s appeal was dismissed in 2020 by a panel of three Justices, including Elizabeth Musoke, Christopher Izama Madrama, and Irene Mulyagonja, who claimed that it was without merit.
The judges ruled that Akena should not carry out party activities while still being in office illegally since the High Court had removed him. The Opposition party was mandated by the Court of Appeal to hold elections to choose a legitimate leader.
The results tally sheet for the UPC presidential election, which revealed that Akena received the majority of votes in 67 districts and received 63% of the vote overall, was published by the Court of Appeal in the verdict thus making Akena continue his UPC Presidential duties.
The last time UPC ran a presidential candidate was in the 2011 elections when Olara Otunnu was the party’s leader. Under Akena’s leadership, UPC declared that they would not have a candidate for president in the general elections of 2016 and similarly in 2021.
Akena said that the decision to withdraw from the presidential contest was intentional due to the party’s lack of campaign funding. He, therefore, postponed his intention to run for president of Uganda until 2026.
Controversies
In August 2011, UPC’s president by then, Olara Otunnu declared that Jimmy Akena was not a member of the political party. Akena jumped from his seat and headed straight to attack Otunnu, fortunately, he was restrained before he could hit him. Akena had long viewed Otunnu as an imposter in his father’s political party.
In January 2021, Jimmy Akena asserted that he was still the party’s legitimately elected leader and that the Court of Appeal decision that invalidated his election was unrelated to his current term in office.
By holding a delegate’s conference where Akena was chosen as the party president, Kakonge and his supporters claimed in August 2020 that Akena and the electoral commission had violated the court’s orders. They also tried to remove Akena from office.
The application submitted to the Court of Appeal argued that the July 29 court order suspending the event had been violated by the UPC delegates conference that took place on August 1.
However, the court rejected Kakonge’s application due to continuous inefficiency or waste of the court’s time.
Jimmy Akena spoke out about his affiliation with the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, which is currently in power.
To succeed President Museveni in 2026, Akena acknowledged that he was collaborating closely with the NRM party.
Further, the NRM leaders charged that the President had funded UPC with enormous quantities of money to oppose them.
However, Akena made no mention of getting any financial support for his campaign or the campaigns of the flag bearers for the UPC party from President Museveni.
According to Akena, working with Museveni does not indicate that he has joined the NRM; rather, he is still a member of UPC and he would always support his father’s political party.
Eddie Engena Maitum and Tony Akaki, the other two sons of Obote, were upset with how Akena and his wife Betty Among were monopolizing all the money including the annual billions paid for their father’s benefits.
Engena, who is also a Kenyan preacher, stormed his mother Miria’s home in Kololo in November 2020 and demanded to know why he should live in poverty while his father was a very wealthy former president of Uganda.
When Akena saw him there, he challenged him, and the two began to fight before Miria, their mother, broke them apart.
Engena charged Miria with supporting Akena even though he mistreats them by depriving them of Obote’s son’s benefits. Engena cursed Akena while sobbing and vowed to Miria that he would never return.
When Bishop Engena’s Kenyan wife passed away, he did not go back on his word. Instead, he grieved on his own, apart from Akena and the rest of the family.
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