It was not done with a Cabinet memo. It was not done with a presidential directive. It was done with a series of posts on X.
Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Chief of Defence Forces and son of President Yoweri Museveni, has declared that the Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development — PACEID — is a criminal and illegal organisation. He says he has dissolved it.
And he has already decided what to do with its money. He has ordered that the $18 million that was meant for PACEID be sent to the UPDF to build accommodation for soldiers.
This is how Uganda’s export agenda ended up in the barracks.
The Statement That Changed Everything
Days after security operatives picked Matthew Bagonza from his home in Entebbe, Gen. Muhoozi posted: “We are officially dissolving PACEID as an organisation. All its functions, budgets and responsibilities will be taken over by Operation Wealth Creation. This starts immediately.”
Then came the money: “Ministry of Finance is advised to send all the $18 million they wanted to give the criminal Odrek to UPDF. We will build more accommodation for soldiers with it.”
Then the warning to the media: “I want to advise all members of the Ugandan media who are increasingly becoming supporters of PLU. Do not become complicit in the thievery of illegal organisations like PACEID. You will be held accountable too.”
In three posts, a body created by the President in 2022 was erased, its budget reallocated, and its chairman, Odrek Rwabwogo, who is married to Patience Museveni labelled a criminal.
The Man Behind the Acronym
To understand why this matters, you must understand what PACEID actually did.
Before PACEID, Uganda was good at growing things and bad at selling them. We exported raw coffee beans at $2 and imported roasted coffee at $40. We exported fresh mangoes that rotted at the border because they didn’t meet phytosanitary standards.
PACEID was President Museveni’s answer. Chaired by Rwabwogo and run day-to-day by Bagonza, it was tasked with one thing: fix the standards, find the markets, bring buyers. Its biggest product was Uganda Connect and the Buyers Week where European and Middle East supermarkets were flown to Kampala to sign deals directly with farmers and processors.
You may like Odrek or hate him, but every exporter will tell you that for the first time, someone in State House was calling them about export certificates, not votes.
Now that office is being told it is criminal. Not by the IGG. Not by the Auditor General. Not by Parliament. By the CDF on social media.
The $18 Million Question
Where did $18 million come from? The Ministry of Finance had allocated funds to PACEID to run trade hubs abroad, certify products, and run export clinics. That money, according to Gen Muhoozi, should now build soldiers’ houses.
On paper, soldiers need houses. No one denies that. The UPDF housing crisis is real. But in law, a budget appropriated by Parliament for exports cannot be moved to Defence by a tweet. That is appropriation without authority. It violates the Public Finance Management Act.
More importantly, it replaces a civilian export strategy with a military operation. Operation Wealth Creation is headed by Gen. Salim Saleh. It was created to distribute seedlings and inputs. It has never negotiated an export standard with the EU or the Gulf. PACEID and OWC do different jobs. Merging them by declaration shows a misunderstanding of what industrial growth actually needs.
A Family Feud Wearing Uniform
What makes this dissolution strange is the silence of the man who created PACEID.
When Rwabwogo says he rushed to Entebbe and President Museveni told him he neither knew of nor ordered Bagonza’s arrest, it leaves only two possibilities. Either the President has lost control of his own security apparatus, or his son is acting with implied authority that the President cannot publicly disown.
Both are bad for Uganda.
For months, Muhoozi and Odrek have been in a cold war. Muhoozi called Odrek the biggest thief in Uganda. Odrek kept quiet and continued working. Then came Bagonza’s detention, the half-naked photo, threats of 3,000 canes a week, threats of caning his stomach, and talk that his death would be a good thing.
This is no longer policy disagreement. This is personal power using state machinery.
Rwabwogo said something after meeting Museveni: “The record of President Museveni over the past 40 years is there is no arbitrary arrests; there is due process.” He was not just defending Museveni. He was reminding the country that what we are seeing is not Museveni’s style. It is something new.
What Uganda Loses
The ordinary Ugandan farmer in Bushenyi who was about to get his avocado certified for export will not understand PACEID vs OWC. He will only know that the people who promised to connect him to a buyer in Dubai are now in detention and their office is closed.
The elite Ugandan investor who was planning a processing plant will read this and pause. If a presidential agency can be dissolved on X and its budget seized, what is the guarantee on any government incentive?
You cannot build industrialization on fear. Investors, whether local or foreign, need predictability. They need to know that when Ministry of Finance says $18 million is for exports, it will be for exports, not for barracks.
If PACEID was corrupt, as Gen Muhoozi alleges, the right thing is simple: arrest Bagonza and Odrek legally, produce evidence, prosecute them in the Anti-Corruption Court, and let the public see the theft. Posting a detainee half-naked and threatening to cane him to death does not fight corruption. It confirms impunity.
Tonight, PACEID offices are quiet. Bagonza’s whereabouts are still officially unknown, except for the photo. And a tweet says its $18 million now belongs to the army.
Uganda did not just dissolve an organisation. It dissolved the line between family, army, and state. And that is far more expensive than $18 million.
