The National Unity Platform (NUP) has asked Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga to resign from his position as parliamentary commissioner following his admission to receiving 500 million shillings.
In a statement released by the NUP secretariat on Thursday evening, party President Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, convened a meeting with senior party leaders after corruption allegations surfaced against several NUP officials, including Mpuuga, the former Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, and other commissioners.
The allegations implicated Mpuuga and other commissioners in irregularly allocating large sums of money to themselves under the guise of service awards, with Mpuuga reportedly receiving 500 million shillings.
According to the press statement from NUP, during the meeting, Mpuuga admitted that he indeed took part in the said allocation of money and apologized for the same.
DETAILS FROM NUP
There is an ongoing online protest under the hashtag #UgandaParliamentExhibition. The protest aims at exposing the massive corruption, abuse of office and gross mismanagement of public affairs by the leadership of Parliament and other leaders.
Unfortunately, the protest has not only revealed grand corruption on the side of NRM leaders. Some leaders on the opposition side have had serious allegations of corruption leveled against them. Specifically, our former Leader of the Opposition in Parliament and current Parliamentary Commissioner, Rt. Hon. Mathias Mpuuga alongside three other Parliamentary Commissioners have been accused of irregularly awarding themselves huge sums of tax-payers’ money on the pretext of “Service Awards”. Under the scheme, Rt. Hon. Mpuuga was allocated 500,000,000/= (Five Hundred Million Uganda Shillings).
On Wednesday 28th February 2024, the President convened an urgent meeting comprised of senior leaders of the Party including all Deputy Presidents and some of our senior legislators. At the meeting, Rt. Hon. Mpuuga admitted that he indeed took part in this wrong doing and apologised for the same. In light of this, he was strongly advised that the moral thing to do in the circumstances is to step down from his role as Parliamentary Commissioner with immediate effect.
The nation will recall that the values of the National Unity Platform are Discipline, Reliability, Inclusiveness, Integrity, Patriotism and Service. All actions of corruption and abuse of office go contrary to these values. They also go contrary to the Integrity Oath which every leader of the Party swore at the start of this term.
We therefore ask our leaders at all levels to do self-reflection and recommit themselves to these values and the Oath they took to shun and fight corruption in all its forms.
