Last Updated on: 8th May 2023, 09:09 pm
Jinja, May 8, 2023: A staunch political activist Magdalene Mugalu Mugume attached to the opposition political party NUP has escaped from Uganda over alleged persecution.
Mugume who was an employee of PostBank Uganda (PBU) for 11 years traces her woes to the chaotic Arua Municipality bye-election in 2018 when Yasin Kawuma, a driver of the then MP for Kyadondo East Robert Ssentamu Kyagulanyi was shot dead.
During the fracas, several NUP supporters and leaders including Kyagulanyi were arrested and paraded before the court on charges of multiple offences including treason and attempted murder.
“…I spoke my mind about these violations and injustices to my workmates, who together with my bosses later on turned against me, accusing me of being an anti-government person…,” she alleges.
She further claims that her supervisors transferred her to Gulu branch as a ‘punishment’ yet she was a married woman with a husband working in Kampala where the children were studying.
“…the truth was they did not want me to work in a government facility because they thought I was a member of the opposition political party,” she explained the alleged persecution.
However, PostBank has dismissed the allegations as false and misleading, saying Mugume was not fired as she claims but simply absconded and left the duty without any clear reasons.
The Public Relations Officer Madam Seeva Mendera accused Mugume of desperately trying to tarnish the image of PostBank Uganda just to gain sympathy from some unsuspecting audience without any evidence to support her allegations.
The 37-year-old former banker alleges that after being labelled an ally of NUP, she faced many threats from some unknown people who kept trailing her everywhere.
Among the atrocities she allegedly went through included being kidnapped on December 1 2020, by some armed plain-clothed men who took her to a dark house from where she was gang raped.
According to relatives, the last nail that forced their daughter to exit Uganda was sexual abuse by some unknown men who allegedly raped her the whole night and dumped her at some place where a bodaboda rider who was passing by took her to a health facility.
After this horrendous incident, Mugume reportedly relocated to Busubuzi Trading Centre in Mityana where she continued to live in fear because some people were trailing her movements.
The relatives who talked to us on condition of anonymity alleged that Mugume was leading a very difficult life of hiding and changing places of abode because of her political stand.
The friends and relatives we talked to could not say with certainty where Mugume has fled but credible sources intimated to us that she is now living either in Australia, Canada or the US, where some good Samaritans are helping her to settle for a new life.