Background
Adoko Nekyonv was born in 1931 in Lango, a cousin of Milton Obote.
Adoko Nekyonv was born in 1931 in Lango, a cousin of Milton Obote.
He was educated at King’s College, Budo (1951-3) and then went to Kerala University in India, from 1955 to 1961, where he got an Arts MA.
He returned home and, after a period as a clerk-interpreter and a trainee sales executive with Shell-BP, he stood for Lango South, his home province, and won a seat in 1961 as a Uganda Peoples Congress member.
He was appointed Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism in 1962 and Minister of Planning and Community Development in 1964.
He was among those ministers, including Milton Obote, who were accused by Daudi Ocheng in Parliament of being involved in smuggling gold and ivory from the Congo in February 1966. He strongly denied the charges and was glad to see the Prime Minister appoint an independent commission of enquiry into the matter.
After the constitutional crisis that followed, he was, for a few weeks in May 1966, Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives, but he then resigned, partly to leave himself more free to take effective leadership of the important Muslim group in the country and partly because he disagreed with Obote’s plans to amend the constitution and strengthen Presidential powers. He spoke out in Parliament to this effect. He remained an active and critical back bencher and, when the military coup occurred on January 25, 1971. he chose to leave rather than remain behind under the new military government. He slipped across the frontier and went into exile in Dar es Salaam, which has been his main base since. He did not take part in the invasion of Uganda by the exiles in Tanzania in September 1972.
A huge man, with a hearty extroverted character, and a prominent Muslim leader, he became one of the most powerful ministers in Uganda, before the coup. His boundless energy and his close kinship to Milton Obote, put him second in the political hierarchy at one stage. Obote’s faith in him was rewarded by his staunch loyalty when they both came under attack in Parliament.
But Nekyon was no “yes man” and he finally broke with Obote when he felt that he was taking too much power to himself as President under the new constitution. But immediately after the coup, though the breach with Obote was still not healed, he preferred to live in exile in Dar cs Salaam rather than stay in Kampala.