On Tuesday 8 March 2022, the country was taken by surprise when the Commander Land Forces Lt. Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba announced his retirement over his official Twitter handle, saying that after 28 years of service, he was glad to retire from the army.
However, after a meeting on Thursday, it was claimed that President Museveni advised the first son to stay in the Army which he accepted. In another video that went viral on Twitter, the Commander Land Forces was seen with renowned journalist Andrew Mwenda saying that he didn't mean that he was retiring anytime soon but after 8 years.
Now, The Fatboy Show Presenters James Onen aka Fatboy and Olive Najjuma like other Ugandans were left speculating about what could be broiling between Muhoozi and his father President Museveni.
“A part of me was wondering if he could have put that tweet announcing his retirement as a way of compelling the higher-ups within the army or his father to bow to some demands he may have made that we don’t know about yet? For example regarding deployment, promotion or basically something regarding the structure of the military.” Fatboy said.
Olive in response said, “It could be possible, you could find that in as much as it is on paper that he is the Commander of Land Forces, he probably doesn’t have as much power as he should have.”
From an employment point of view, Fatboy reasoned that in a working environment when someone is not happy with the conditions, they might express their dissatisfaction loud enough so as to be heard such that the concerned parties are put into panic to give into the demands of a much treasured employee the organization is not willing to lose.
However, Olive believed that if this was the first son’s move, then it would be him outstepping his boundaries. “For a person who has skipped many ranks to get to where he is, if this was his play, he is quite entitled. Because let's face it; the army is not like any other place where you can skip through ranks and just find yourself at the top, many people move from one rank to another even after leading missions in Somalia and the DRC. They don’t just make you skip like 5 levels but this has happened with this person,” she said.
After the announcement of his retirement on Twitter, several people speculated that Muhoozi wanted to join politics and probably succeed his father in the presidential seat.
Fatboy then asked whether Olive thinks this might be a planned move that the President is fully aware of to which she responded “Of course, if anything I know about this family is that until the last minute, you can never know what they are all about.”
The Fatboy show is hosted by James Onen aka Fatboy, Olive and Sarah every weekday from 6am to 10am on RX Radio.