Ms Jenifer Bamuturaki and Uganda Airlines have parted ways.
But Ms Bamuturaki’s journey out of the national carrier’s top managerial seat was expected like a delayed flight. Why? Because it began the day she was appointed amid queries of the appointment criteria and a mongrel of issues bringing down the airlines since inception. Ms Bamuturaki, who on July 5, 2022, was confirmed as the Chief Executive Officer of Uganda Airlines after serving in an acting capacity for several months, on Monday this week threw in the towel in a leaked internal email, in which she encouraged her colleagues to apply and replace her upon seeing an advert.
She said: ‘The Board will advertise the position of Chief Executive Officer shortly, and you are all encouraged to apply if you meet the required qualifications. The job description and application form will be published on the website.’
Curiously, the email could be interpreted that she fired herself. It wasn’t from the board or any higher hierarchy in the airlines.
Mr Waisswa Bageya, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Works and Transport, under which the airline directly falls, said: ‘That was not part of her role (sending a notification about the position).’ He said Ms Bamuturaki’s contract, which was last year granted a one-year extension, was bound to expire this July. Mr Bageya said the ministry’s stance on the recruitment process for the chief executive officer’s replacement is clear and that the process should be handled by a contracted recruitment company, which will be tasked with identifying the most suitable candidate for the position.
The Board chairperson of Uganda Airlines, Ms Priscilla Sseruka, yesterday told this publication that the process of replacing Ms Bamuturaki had already begun, with the job advertisement being posted on the authority’s website and has appeared in the dailies. (See Page 7). ‘This proactive approach is aimed at ensuring a smooth transition and having a suitable candidate in place by July,’ she said.
She added: ‘The search for such a position needed to start early to enable sufficient search and a person in place by July.’ Her statement underscores the importance of a thorough and timely recruitment process to identify the best candidate for the role.
Genesis of the trouble
The turbulence which Ms Bamuturaki found herself in during her time at the helm had a history to it. And to understand it, it is useful to look at the events preceding her appointment in which she was accused of wrongdoing. While Ms Bamuturaki is partly responsible for her own downfall because some of the actions and decisions she allegedly took while still the airline’s commercial director between 2019 and March 2020, which came back to haunt her after assuming the CEO role, a cocktail of other factors are to blame for her exit.
During the Cornwell Muleya’s time as CEO, the airline was undergoing various challenges orchestrated by internal fights between board and managerial officials and their line ministry counterparts. These challenges included inflated costs, fights over money and jobs, and multi-million-dollar procurement contracts for jet fuel, uniforms, and control of agencies outside Uganda to manage ticket sales for the corporation.
The Sunday Monitor on May 30, 2021, reported that the fights began even before August 2019, when the Airline launched operations with flights from Entebbe to Nairobi, Mombasa, Mogadishu, Juba, Bujumbura, Dar-es-Salaam, and Kilimanjaro.
Those fights culminated in the suspension on April 28 of the top management team, including Mr Muleya, the Finance Director, Mr Paul Turacayisenga; the Director of Marketing, Mr Rogers Wamala; the Human Resource Manager, Mr Joseph Sebbowa, and the Director of Safety, Mr Bruno Oringi.
A week later, the seven-member Board of Directors, led by former Minister of State for Local Government and former MP for Rubanda East, Mr Perez Ahabwe, alongside Mr Benon Kajuna, Mr Godfrey Ssemugooma, Ms Catherine Asinde Poran, Ms Rehema Mutazindwa, Mr Charles Hamya, and Mr Stephen Aziku Zua, were also sent packing. This newspaper further reported that these suspensions had resulted from multiple reports written and sent to President Museveni by all interested parties. The then State Minister of Transport, Ms Joy Kabatsi, under whose supervision the airline fell, was also shockingly fired by her boss.
The Transport and Works Minister, Gen Edward Katumba Wamala, a few days later, said the group had been forced to take accumulated leave. But President Museveni, while speaking at the election of the Speaker and the Deputy in Kololo, revealed that it was on his instructions that the management team and the Board were sent packing. ‘The airline was infiltrated immediately (it was revived) by some corrupt elements – employing their relatives, over budgeting, inflating procurement costs, terrible! Terrible things! When I got the information, I dispersed the whole group,’ Mr Museveni said.
At this time, Ms Bamuturaki was out of the airline, having been forced out in March 2020 after it was discovered that she reportedly used her position as commercial director to handpick a media and communications agency, Abbavater Group, which was contracted to run publicity campaigns around the receipt of the first two CRJ900 aircraft in April 2019 and the launch of commercial flights on August 28, 2019. After the storm, the board of the airlines recalled Ms Bamuturaki and appointed her acting CEO until her appointment on July 5, 2022, by the President.
Cosase exposes Bamuturaki
However, getting the job was one thing. The other was sweeping under the carpet the dirt at the national carrier. Important in this matrix is that her appointment by the President, without going through the recruitment process that was being conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), added salt to the wound. Barely one year into the role, scandals piled up around her, one after another, and the open August-September 2022 probe into the financial and operational irregularities of Uganda Airlines by the Parliament Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises (Cosase) laid bare Ms Bamuturaki’s underbelly.
The probe, which also attracted the attention of the Parliament Public Accounts Committee (PAC), delved into the airline’s management in detail, following the FY2020/2021 Auditor General’s annual audit that had unearthed glaring losses and mismanagement. Ms Bamuturaki, whom the probe touched directly due to her participation in some of the issues while serving as director commercial at the time, faced a rough ride in the Committee.
Although Speaker of Parliament Anita Among blocked the Cosase report from being discussed on the floor, citing that it had been leaked to the media, its findings left an egg on Ms Bamuturaki’s face. Cosase spent two months probing the operations of Uganda Airlines, basing its inquiry on the findings of the FY2020/2021 Auditor General John Muwanga’s report, which had unearthed gross mismanagement. Mr Muwanga, who was the AG at the time, discovered that the airline, trading as Uganda National Airlines Company Ltd (UNACL), had made losses worth Shs164.5 billion between FY2019/2020 and FY2020/2021.
The audit further revealed that the airline collected only Shs48.6 billion out of the budgeted Shs304.6 billion. The AG also found that UNACL implemented 25 procurements outside the approved procurement plan for FY2020/2021, amounting to pound 1,150,854.06, Kshs61,879.2, $65,441.36, Tzshs7,752,600, and Shs346,738,939. It also uncovered that the company made payments to service providers without following due process, along with other irregularities. During the proceedings, the Committee uncovered further mismanagement and a leadership crisis at the airline, including revelations that Ms Bamuturaki was incompetent and lacked the required qualifications for the job.
On August 18, 2021, Ms Bamuturaki told legislators that she had presented a degree in Social Works and Social Administration (SWASA), which she attained from Makerere University in 1994. This was contrary to the job requirement, which demanded a degree in any field plus postgraduate training in administration or another business-related course. Legislators were also taken aback to learn that Ms Bamuturaki had not collected her academic transcript from Makerere University since 1994, when she completed her degree.
In her defence, Ms Bamuturaki told reporters: ‘In aviation, IATA [International Air Transport Association] does not give you degrees. It gives diplomas or certificates. The certificates I have from IATA, if I put them together, they will come to a diploma but I have a degree. It does not matter whether I went to the moon or whether I did MDD [Music, Dance and Drama], what matters is do I have the skill, and I do.’ She was additionally accused of acting without the authority of the Board to steer company decisions, a move that observers said showed she had bitten off more than she could chew.
For instance, she was accused of using her powers, in December 2021, to make the airline enter into an agreement with the Independent Journalists Associate of Uganda (Indoja-U), an organisation that brought together 23 online publications and two individual journalists, to clean up the image of the airline. Cosase also recommended that Ms Bamuturaki be held responsible for an irregular contract with these online bloggers to improve the airline’s image, costing taxpayers Shs156 million, because the public relations manager was kept in the dark about the said contract, and payments were made upfront.
It was discovered that the airline was making losses, with Shs500 billion going down the drain in three years with no sign of recovery. Cosase also discovered an internal racket involving more than 900 passengers whose tickets, valued at approximately Shs982 million, were not reflected in the reported revenue. The probe found that there were too many cooks spoiling the broth after the airline relied on middlemen for fuel supply, resulting in higher costs compared to direct sourcing from suppliers such as Shell and Total.
The CEO was found to be earning a monthly salary of Shs87 million, with other top officials receiving high salaries without clear, approved, or standardized structures. It was also concluded in the report that the management’s left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing after they failed to maintain proper records for engineering and general stores, leading to a lack of accountability for assets.
Speaking to the Daily Monitor yesterday, Mr Joel Ssenyonyi, who is now the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (LoP), said: ‘Bamuturaki’s sacking was overdue. If what we raised was addressed in time, we would be in a better place now, but we hope her successor will be recruited in a clear process and do a good job.’
The Muleya report to Salim Saleh
Issues raised by Cosase had partly been pointed out by Mr Muleya in the January 27, 2021, report, which he handed to Mr Museveni’s younger brother and coordinator for operation wealth creation, Gen Salim Saleh, for onward transmission to the President. Mr Muleya, in the report that this publication covered, accused some members of the Board of feathering their own nests because by pushing ‘for the promotion of self-interest’ and, in other cases, colluded with some managers to make a quick buck.
The report read in part: ‘.In procurement specifically, management has witnessed cases where Board members have met with some members of the management team with a view to finding ways of invoice loading and other money-making schemes.This attempted collusion… has tended to divide the management team and has brought inefficiency…’ he wrote. Mr Muleya further pointed out that procurement managers had been robbing Peter to pay Paul by colluding with people in government to steal from the airline.
The Board discovered that some of the agencies that had been recruited were guilty of selling tickets at inflated prices and pocketing the difference. Between August 2019 and February 2021, for example, the Board’s report indicated that the airline lost $26,991 (about Shs96m). Another major cause of trouble for Ms. Bamuturaki was the management of the lucrative media and publicity docket, which falls under the Commercial Director’s office.
Mr Muleya reported that the directorate blew up Shs778.7 million for hosting 600 people when the airline received the first CRJ900 Bombardier, implying that the airline spent Shs1.3 million on maintaining a single guest. The fights also surrounded nepotism and favouritism in issuing employment and the fuel deal. Mr Muleya reported that one of the ministers had initially struck a deal with a local firm to supply the airline with fuel, but the Board shot the deal down because the terms were not favourable, as the local firm was demanding advance payments every two weeks-trying to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
The Board also questioned the rationale behind the procurement of Mixed Jet, which they claimed was supplying fuel at a higher cost. Parliament, in December last year, passed Shs25.166 billion as part of the Shs8.1 trillion Supplementary to enable Uganda National Airlines Company Limited to settle contractual obligations with Mlxjet FZE for fuel supply and Rolls-Royce for aircraft engine maintenance.
Fresh probe
Ms Bamuturaki’s sacking came barely a month after the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID), working jointly with the State House Anti-Corruption Unit (SHACU), formally launched a probe into the operations of the airline. In the January 7 letter addressed to Ms Bamuturaki, the CID, working jointly with SHACU, requested extensive financial and procurement records from Uganda Airlines, centering on alleged abuse of office, embezzlement of funds, and false accounting linked to the airline’s financial transactions.
Investigators, according to the letter, were seeking board-approved business plans, budgets for the 2024/2025 Financial Year, contracts linked to the acquisition of Boeing aircraft, and procurement files covering key suppliers, including fuel, ground handling, travel, and aircraft leasing services. The airline, in late December last year, came under criticism for flight delays and cancellations, as customers experienced repeated disruptions. The SHACU spokesperson, Ms Mariam Natasha, yesterday said the ongoing probe has nothing to do with Ms Bamuturaki’s sacking.
‘Our investigations are still in the initial stages, so we can’t really say that maybe our investigations are part of anything. The unit is still gathering information and has not yet reached a conclusive stage.’ Ms Natasha, who declined to provide a specific timeline for the investigation, added: ‘We just literally started, and so right now there’s nothing we can cover because the investigations are still in initial stages. The updates will be provided as the investigation progresses, as they go along, you people will get to know.’
What they said…
Via his X-platform, Mr Mike Mukula, an aviation businessman, said Uganda Airlines will only succeed if it is run as a commercial airline, not a political project. He wrote: ‘.Uganda Airlines needs a CEO with extensive international airline experience, backed by a clear mandate and real authority to run the business commercially. The management team should consist of proven experts in marketing, flight operations, maintenance engineering, and financial control.
If governance is right, people are right, and politics stay out, Uganda Airlines can become competitive, credible, and profitable.’ Captain Francis Babu, a renowned expert in the aviation industry, said the ongoing leadership struggles at Uganda Airlines were bound to come to a head, noting that ‘it was just a matter of time before the hide and seek came to an end.’ Babu called for a taskforce, composed of experts, possibly from outside the country, to be appointed to revamp the airline. ‘Get a taskforce, not a CEO, to revamp the airline,’ he said.
Mr Amos Wekesa, the CEO of Great Lakes Safaris and a tourism enthusiast, emphasised the importance of a reliable national airline for Uganda’s economic growth. ‘We need to appreciate the fact that Uganda is a landlocked country and, therefore, cannot be airlocked,’he said, highlighting the challenges faced by landlocked countries, citing the example of thriving businesses in neighbouring cities like Arusha, which have better connectivity and infrastructure.
Wekesa attributes Uganda’s struggles to its inadequate airline carrier, citing issues with management, planning, and marketing. ‘A landlocked country needs a proper airline carrier, and that requires proper management, proper planning, and proper marketing,’ he said. The current challenges facing Uganda Airlines have been discouraging, making it tough for the national carrier to build a good reputation-truly a case of trying to make bricks without straw.