For the years I have worked with Daily Monitor, I have learnt that separating Mr Philip Wafula Oguttu, one of the co-founders of then The Monitor in 1992, which later changed to Daily Monitor, from his business is a herculean task.
This assessment always came to the fore each time I introduced myself in Busoga Sub-region, where I previously worked as the Nation Media Group Uganda (NMG-U) Bureau Chief. What always followed was whether I was his son.
In some cases when I introduced myself as ‘Philip Wafula’, the other person would add ‘Oguttu’, reinforcing their preferred manner in which both names should be stated. Even when I was transferred to Kampala last November, the inference remained the same.
Mr Andrew Mwenda, who previously practiced his journalism at Daily Monitor, is the latest person to ask if I am related to Mr Oguttu. ‘Are you his son?’
Mr Mwenda was being informed that Mr Oguttu was retiring from the Monitor Publications Limited Board, and his personal and professional assessment of a man who, 33 years ago, started the newspaper where he practiced journalism mattered.
But before Mr Mwenda, during my appointment at Daily Monitor, close to ten years ago, I was inclined to provide ‘full disclosure’ of any relationship I had with Mr Oguttu. My response was that I didn’t know him and only read about him in the newspapers.
But my most enduring challenge of sharing both names with Mr Oguttu, was when he lost his wife, Alice Nabugembe Oguttu, on June 24, 2023.
The former Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Parliament had spent six months agonising over the death of his wife to whom he had been married for 42 years.
When my supervisor dispatched me to cover her burial in Saanika Village, Nankoma Sub-county in Bugiri District, I wasn’t ready for what awaited me, as mourners who knew me mistook the deceased of being my biological mother – a misplaced account bolstered by ‘being’ Mr Oguttu’s son!
I looked on helplessly as several mourners in a sombre-induced frame of mind consoled me for losing the mother that wasn’t.
On Wednesday, I thrice denied being related to Mr Ogutu, and there was no cockcrow! While I have run out of fingers stating the number of times I have denied knowing him since I joined Daily Monitor, he, too, has always been asked if he was my father!
‘Two Board members asked me if I was your father and I told them I have never seen you,’ he said. I seized this opportunity to ask him how many times he, too, has denied being my father. ‘Twice’, he said, followed by laughter and hugs of two contrasting figures who were only brought together by both names and proximity to their current and former workplaces.
Such is the dilemma I have endured for having the same names with a man whose oversight has helped many professionals realise their dream and shape their destiny.
Waf, as he is fondly referred to, as a way of bidding farewell, on Wednesday oversaw the operations across NTV, Spark TV, Dembe FM, KFM, all Nation Media Uganda (NMG-U) platforms.
After chairing the planning meetings for editors and reporters, Mr Oguttu remained at Daily Monitor newsroom in Namuwongo, Industrial Area, to perform one last dance as News Editor of today’s edition.