SHE had the throne, the motorcade, and the Rolls-Royce. Now Anita Annet Among – until days ago the most powerful woman in Uganda’s Parliament – is battling to keep both her liberty and her backbench seat, after a Museveni-sanctioned, multi-agency raid tore through her palatial Nakasero mansion on Saturday morning in a corruption probe into alleged illicit enrichment and money laundering.
It is a stunning fall – and it has been engineered, with devastating swiftness, by the very symbols of excess that Among could not resist displaying.
The beginning of the end came three weeks ago, when reports emerged that the Speaker of Uganda’s 11th Parliament had acquired a Rolls-Royce Cullinan – a vehicle favoured by oil sheikhs, football superstars and billionaires – reportedly worth UGX 3.4 billion (approximately US$440,000) after taxes. Among said it was a birthday gift. The public, in one of Africa’s poorest countries, was unpersuaded.
The blow that sealed her fate came at President Yoweri Museveni’s seventh-term inauguration on 12 May, when Among swept onto the Kololo Ceremonial Grounds in a yellow Oscar de la Renta embroidered gown and matching jacket – an ensemble estimated at UGX 42.5 million. The optics were catastrophic. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the President’s son and Chief of Defence Forces, had already been watching. That day, he moved.
“I have been Mzee’s son for 52 years but I have never sat in a Rolls-Royce ever. I cannot support corruption.”
Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba
Muhoozi’s Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU) cancelled its formal endorsement of Among for the Speakership of the incoming 12th Parliament with immediate effect, pivoting its support to Defence Minister Jacob Marksons Oboth-Oboth. Two days later, meetings at State House — one among ministers, one within the first family — delivered the quiet directive: Among was to step aside. The reason cited was the toxic public controversy surrounding her accumulated wealth.
She had been expected to waltz back into the Speaker’s chair. She had won her Bukedea parliamentary seat unopposed in October 2025, took her oath on 13 May 2026, and commanded deep loyalty among MPs whose electoral campaigns she had allegedly bankrolled. But the political mathematics had changed overnight.
On Saturday, the legal reckoning arrived in the form of uniformed and plainclothes officers at her gate. A joint security team led by the Criminal Investigations Directorate, backed by UPDF and other agencies, cordoned off the upscale Nakasero home – the hill address that had become a symbol of her improbable ascent – and conducted what witnesses described as an extensive, methodical search. Police leadership declined to comment publicly on the scope of the probe. Her allies called it political intimidation. The Inspectorate of Government confirmed it had already received and was processing a formal petition against her.
Among now faces a two-front war with no obvious exit. Domestically, the corruption probe – framed around illicit enrichment and money laundering – carries the existential threat of criminal prosecution. Internationally, she entered this crisis already sanctioned: both the United Kingdom and the United States placed travel bans and asset freezes on her in 2024, citing her role in the Karamoja iron sheets scandal in which aid materials meant for Uganda’s most vulnerable communities were diverted. She denied wrongdoing and called both sets of sanctions politically motivated. The argument bought time. It has not bought safety.
Her parliamentary seat – the last remaining institutional foothold of a woman who once wielded the gavel over a 529-member legislature – is also under a cloud. The question of whether she can retain it while facing an active corruption investigation and the potential stripping of privileges is one that Uganda’s legal and constitutional landscape has not fully answered.
What is clear is that the Rolls-Royce, the designer gown, and the mansion on the hill – each a trophy of power accumulated in the four years since she took the Speakership following the death of Jacob Oulanyah – have together written the narrative of her undoing. In Uganda, and perhaps across an African continent watching closely, the story of Anita Among has become a parable about the price of ostentation in public office: the moment the symbol becomes bigger than the office, the office is already gone.
