KAMPALA —Presidential Adviser on Special Duties and PACEID chairman Odrek Rwabwogo has broken his silence over the reported arrest and detention of his personal assistant, Matthew Bagonza, revealing that he was forced to search through several security agencies before finally taking the matter to State House Entebbe.
Rwabwogo said he initially struggled to establish where Bagonza had been taken after his disappearance, prompting him to contact different security authorities in an effort to trace the aide.
The search eventually led him to State House Entebbe, where Rwabwogo met President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and briefed him about the incident.
According to Rwabwogo, Museveni told him that he had no prior knowledge of Bagonza’s arrest and had not issued any directive ordering his detention.
The revelation has added another layer to an increasingly explosive dispute surrounding the Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development (PACEID), which has recently come under intense criticism from within the country’s powerful security and political establishment.
Bagonza’s reported detention came only days after Chief of Defence Forces Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba launched a series of public attacks against PACEID, describing the organisation as “illegal” and warning that its officials could face arrest.
The comments immediately raised questions about the future of the committee and its leadership, particularly because Rwabwogo, who chairs PACEID, is President Museveni’s son-in-law.
Bagonza was reportedly picked up by individuals believed to be attached to the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in Entebbe. His detention subsequently became a subject of intense public discussion after Gen. Muhoozi posted photographs of Bagonza on social media.
In the post, Muhoozi claimed Bagonza was “in the Basement learning Swahili,” a phrase that was later deleted.
The expression has increasingly become political slang in Uganda, where references to being taken to the “basement” are often interpreted as an indication that a person has been detained by security agencies.
The circumstances surrounding Bagonza’s arrest have therefore generated questions over who authorised the operation, why he was detained and whether the action was connected to the escalating confrontation over PACEID.
Rwabwogo’s account is particularly significant because it suggests that the President was not directly involved in ordering the detention of his adviser’s aide.
It also exposes the complexity of Uganda’s security command structure, with powerful institutions sometimes becoming the subject of competing claims and public statements from senior officials.
The controversy comes at a politically sensitive moment for the ruling establishment, with Gen. Muhoozi’s public criticism of PACEID placing the organisation and its leadership under unprecedented scrutiny.
PACEID was established to promote exports, industrial development, investment and economic transformation, but its growing influence has increasingly attracted public and political attention.
For Rwabwogo, the detention of his aide has now transformed an already heated institutional dispute into a more personal confrontation.
The key unanswered questions remain who ordered Bagonza’s arrest, which security agency was responsible and what information authorities were seeking from him.
As the controversy unfolds, attention is increasingly turning to the apparent divisions within Uganda’s ruling establishment and whether the Bagonza affair signals a deeper struggle over influence, security and economic power at the heart of government.
