Gerald Bareebe
Tororo
Mr Suleiman Wasoko Luboti is a retired driver and resident of Tororo Municipality. The 64-year-old has lived here since he was 20 and says he has not felt unsettled like in the past days after Cabinet announced its decision to split Tororo into Mukuju and Kisoko districts.
“The government should be bold enough and spilt this district. Failure to do so will be postponing the problem,” he said. “The truth is that the two tribes can no longer peacefully live together.”
The agitation for a district status for the Iteso of Tororo started in 1998. In 2005 when President Museveni held a rally at Mukuju Sub-county headquarters, a brave Iteso ate a live rat to demonstrate to the President that there is a cultural variation between the Iteso and the Jopadhola.
This action prompted Mr Museveni to institute two commissions of inquiry, the Prof. Foster Byarugaba commission and that of Dr Crispus Kiyonga.
Both commissions recommended for the split of Tororo into Mukuju and Kisoko districts and also contended that the municipality remains in Mukuju.
Tracing the origin
At first, the current Tororo District was named Budama but was later divided into West Budama and East Budama. The Iteso who occupied East Budama rejected the name ‘Budama’ arguing that they are not Badama.
That led to the renaming of East Budama Tororo County and this area includes present-day Tororo Municipality.
When Tororo was given municipality status, it was detached from the county. As a result, Tororo District is comprised of the constituencies of West Budama, Tororo County and Tororo Municipality.
The Jopadhola are Luo. They have similar traditions of origin with the Alur, Acholi and the Joluo of Kenya. They live amidst various Bantu ethnic groups. They are said to have settled there since the middle of the 16th century.
They are surrounded on all sides by the Bantu and the Nile-Hamites peoples.
To the west live the Banyole and the Basoga; to their north and East live the Bagwere and Iteso; and to their south live the Basamia and Bagwe.
The Iteso, on the other hand, are part of the Karimojong group which is said to have come from Abyssinia. By the first half of the 18th century, they had settled on the shores of L. Salisbury.
Tradition asserts that the ancestors of the Iteso came form the direction of Karamoja. However, other historians have modified this tradition to assert that the Iteso are a Nilo-Hamitic group with similar origins as the Langi, the Karimojong, the Jie and the Kumam.
Although it is still hard to figure out which tribe inhabited Tororo District first, the 2002 national census figures show that the Jopadhola are the majority in the municipality and the district at large.
They constitute 57 per cent of the district’s population, while the Iteso are 32 per cent. In the municipality, Jopadhola are 29.5 per cent, followed by the Iteso, 22.4 per cent, Bagisu, 11.5 per cent, Basoga at 6.2 per cent and Banyole at 5.6 per cent.
Tororo Municipality, whose ownership is a big subject of disputation, is the main economic centre in the district. Maps of Tororo District obtained by Saturday Monitor from Uganda bureau of standards show that Tororo Municipality lies in Tororo County.
“The only solutions to this standoff is dividing Tororo because it is what is truthful, It is what is just, It is what is historically correct and it is consistent with previous resolutions,” said Dr Apollo Epuwatt, who operates a private dispensary in Tororo Municipality.
Dr Epuwatt, whose uncle, Moses Ekiring, was killed in the battle against the Jopadhola in 1947 said the Iteso can not be seen to be advancing tribalism by demanding for their identity after several years under marginalisation by the Jopadhola.
Is there evidence of marginalisation?
The entire population of Tororo District is estimated at 838,600, West Budama county is estimated to have 440,100 inhabitants while Tororo county has 327,500 with the municipality have 71,000 inhabitants.
The Iteso say they have over the years been marginalised and denied access to development services by the Jopadholas who dominate most leadership positions at the district. This dominance gives the Jopadhola a chance to influence and determine resource allocation.
Districts records accessed by Saturday Monitor do not suggest otherwise. On the district executive committee, out of the five members, only one Mr Martin Etoori, the vice chairman, is an Iteso. On the public accounts committee, out of the five members, only one, Ms Alice Dokoria, is an Iteso.
The Iteso complain that the Jopadhola engineered a stronghold on committees, which they used to divert a disproportionately larger share of resources to West Budama at the expense of Iteso’s Tororo County.
The 2008/9 budget for education saw Jopadhola’s West Budama getting 75 per cent, compared to Iteso’s Tororo County’s 25 per cent. The Jopadhola have 102 government aided schools while the Iteso have only 48.
In the 2005/6 financial year, the budget allocated to education was skewed with West Budama getting 77 per cent compared to Tororo’s 22 per cent. For the road fund, West Budama got 90km of the total 94.
In the 2009/10 budget estimates for road maintenance and rehabilitation, West Budama is to get 63.2 per cent compared to Tororo County’s 36.8 per cent.
Cultural versus tribal sentiments
As the Jopadhola are fighting to keep their cultural dominance in the region, the Iteso are fighting for their economic survival.
West Budama MP William Oketcho, while appearing before the Local Government Committee of Parliament, said the Jopadhola are not willing to surrender Tororo Municipality because it has some of Jopadhola’s cultural sites. “We are protecting the heritage of our people, the municipality has our cultural shrines and we cannot allow it to be destroyed,” he said.
But the Iteso have dismissed this and accuse the Jopadhola chief of carrying out a deliberate annexation of Iteso’s areas. They also accuse him of buying a land at Amagoro from two Iteso to construct a palace.
“The Jopadhola kingdom is post-independence and not pre-colonial like Buganda and Bunyoro. It came because of the recent government policy toward traditional leaders,” said Mr Nicholas Dokoria, the representative of Emorimor in Tororo County. “King Tieng Adhola was just elected by only Japadholas but he now claims to be in charge of all of us they are using the kingship to claim territories.”
Who stands to lose?
The Jopadhola ‘s fear is that splitting Tororo makes, West Budama lose most in terms of property. These include, the key industrial town of Tororo, which is now economically viable, especially after the discovery of huge phosphate and the revitalisation of Tororo Cement. The government also plans the construction of an inland port in Tororo.
“We have contributed to the development of this town and we shall not surrender it to the Iteso,” says Mr Peter Owori, motorcyclists in Tororo town.
Tororo town is also an educational centre with schools like Tororo Girls, St. Peters College Manjansi, hospitals like Tororo and St. Anthony. Tororo rock, the district’s pride, is also in the municipality.
Apart from small towns like Nagongera and Mulanda trading centres, the new Kisoko district has minimal development activities . However, the Local Government Act provides for the sharing of properties if a district is split.
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