Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has identified the late former Lugari MP Cyrus Jirongo as the senator who alerted him around 2019 that Uganda was purchasing petroleum products through middlemen in Kenya.
Museveni said Jirongo raised the issue with him years before Uganda introduced its current petroleum import arrangement involving the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC).
“It was a Kenyan senator called Jirongo who told me this around 2019,” Museveni said in a statement issued to mark his 82nd birthday on Sunday.
Museveni said he immediately instructed the then Energy Minister Irene Muloni to investigate the matter after Jirongo brought it to his attention.
He had initially referred only to an unnamed Kenyan senator when speaking on Thursday during the groundbreaking of a 320-million-liter petroleum storage terminal in Mpigi District. The Ugandan leader said the senator had “woken him up” to the fact that Uganda was buying petroleum through middlemen rather than directly from bulk suppliers and refineries.
“Nevertheless, nothing happened until 2023, when we linked up with a group known as Vitol,” Museveni said.
However, his clarification places his conversation with Jirongo around 2019, while Kenya’s G-to-G fuel arrangement was developed later, in 2023.
Kenya’s Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi has rejected allegations of irregularities in the arrangement, saying it was introduced amid a severe US dollar shortage and involved international oil companies supplying petroleum products on extended credit terms.
Jirongo, a former Lugari MP and Cabinet minister, died in a road accident along the Nairobi–Nakuru Highway in December 2025. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations said preliminary findings indicated the incident was a road traffic accident, with no evidence of foul play at the time.
