University professor and Observer newspaper cartoonist Jimmy Spire Ssentongo has alleged that Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), whose Executive Director is Dr Chris Mukiza, is pressuring The Observer newspaper to fire him.
Prof Ssentongo does editorial cartooning for The Observer on top of drawing cartoons for activism. He also writes a column for the same weekly newspaper.
A cartoon shared recently depicted UBOS ED Dr Chris Mukiza cooking. Dr Mukiza and other top officials continue to face public criticism over errors and lack of logic in some of the figures contained in the final report for the 2024 population census.
He has also been sharing screenshots of Ugandans’ complaints against the census process and UBOS. Now, the famous Ugandan cartoonist and university professor has alleged that his work criticizing the bureau is being used as a basis to fire him from The Observer newspaper.
Professor Jimmy Spire Ssentongo says UBOS is in panic mode as a number of revelations continue to come to light. “Among the institutions we’ve called to account, perhaps UBOS has been the most dramatically amusing in their panicky reactions!” noted Ssentongo.
“The latest I’m told is that they’ve contacted The Observer to sack me because of the cartoons I drew about the Census mess and the screenshots of complainants I shared here.”
UBOS has in recent weeks of the census figures mess targeted the media as allies in what some suspect is a way of sanitizing the errors. From a breakfast meeting to a sports game with ‘journalists,’ UBOS seems to be on a mission to silence the press — either through the stick or carrot.
Meanwhile, Professor Jimmy Spire Ssentongo has also alleged that a personal assistant to former leader of the opposition in Parliament has been hired to execute the task of ensuring that his association with The Observer newspaper comes to an end.
“Ironically, as birds of a feather flock together, they’ve recruited Hon. Mpuuga’s secretary (Charles Karoli Mugerwa) in their lazy shameless hatchet job!” he alleged.
He has vowed not to be cowed. “This makes me suspect that there is more in UBOS that they are trying to silence us from saying. Why would they be this nervous! Please send us more information. Let’s roll,” he wrote.
It should be remembered that the IGG has threatened to investigate UBOS census figures and the agency’s bosses.
The IGG has previously made top UBOS officials cough money they had stolen, as The Pearl Times reported Here.
The latest errors to cast UBOS census figures in bad light are the numbers for Ugandans living with disabilities, which suggest that 3.4 million people living with disabilities could have died in the past decade. (See Details Here and There).
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