A whistleblower has Parliament and the State House Anti-Corruption Unit (SHACU) to inquire into the circumstances under which the fired boss of the Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority (URBRA), Martin Nsubuga, has continued to physically occupy public office.
The former finance ministry junior employee from Mityana district lost the CEO job at URBRA in August 2025 when the governing board refused to renew his contract and gave the responsibility to someone else to serve in an acting capacity.
While demanding criminal prosecution, the whistleblower reveals that since the day he was fired, Nsubuga never vacated office despite the top most decision.
“He has stayed put to demonstrate his contempt for the governing board whose members he has never forgiven for depriving him of continued enjoyment of a position that exposed him to endless travel opportunities and juicy allowances,” reads part of the petition.
Nsubuga, who was recruited as a junior officer at the finance ministry by Moses Bekabye, the then-caretaker CEO at URBRA, initially as director of supervision & compliance, was elevated to the CEO job in 2018.
According to the whistleblower, Nsubuga was controversially appointed by the board that was then chaired by lawyer Andrew Kasirye, replacing the Kenyan expatriate CEO who had ceased to be.
When Julius Junjura Bigirwa became board chairman and new members came in, the directors were shocked to find that URBRA had a CEO who had nothing on his file as an employee.
“There was no public advert to which he responded, no application, and no record of the recruitment process through which Martin Nsubuga became CEO. There was only an appointment letter, something the new board members (determined to put things right) found to be strange and irregular. When he was asked about the same, Nsubuga became angry and started accusing board members of being money-minded and being biased against him,” the petition reads.
According to him, Nsubuga reportedly started claiming that he was being witch-hunted, especially after he failed to explain himself on shocking findings an internal audit report established against him as the CEO.
“These included Shs3m fuel allowances for the CEO’s office per quarter, which was blown up in just one day. It was also discovered two fuel cards existed, including one that was being used by the CEO’s spouse,” revealed the whistleblower.
There were also questions about the circumstances under which three brand new vehicles came to be assigned to the CEO’s office and for his personal use when other members of top management were struggling to have basic transport means, the petitioner noted.
“Questions were also raised regarding the circumstances under which 11 close relatives came to become part of URBRA’s staff team of 60 employees. And the 11 close relatives became URBRA employees during the period Martin Nsubuga was CEO. Around the same time, internal auditors raised a red flag about the existence of ghost workers at URBRA who had been engaged to work and earn fat salaries purporting to occupy positions that don’t exist in the company structure,” said the petitioner.
There were also questions from the finance ministry regarding circumstances under which several billion were expended in the name of hosting the annual conference for the African Pensions Supervisors Association (APSA) that was hosted by Uganda.
The question was that billions of the Ugandan taxpayers’ money had been expended ostensibly to organize the conference, yet each country delegation had financially contributed towards the same as is always the norm. Instead of soberly explaining, the CEO was always hostile each time such questions were raised by board members, reads the petition.
This created bad blood between CEO Martin Nsubuga and the board members who were also being tasked by the president through the finance ministry to explain why no progress was being made towards delivering on the task that required URBRA to roll out the informal sector members’ savings scheme targeting up to 22 million members in comparison to NSSF’s mere less than 2 million members or savers from among formal sector employees. The government view was that this way, URBRA would be able to mobilize a lot of cash and savings the way their Kenyan counterpart does.
“So, in the end, misunderstandings escalated, and the board concluded that Martin Nsubuga, whose efforts to get back the CEO job through court were recently thwarted by Justice Musa Sekaana, wasn’t the right person to deliver on the high targets their political supervisors at the finance ministry had set for them. That’s how his contract wasn’t renewed, and instead of merely eating a humble pie and letting go, Martin Nsubuga (who lives in the Gayaza neighborhood) opted to fight and filed a judicial review application in the High Court. He pleaded for reinstatement into the CEO job (without which he doesn’t seem capable of moving on with life), but the court declined,” the petitioner revealed.
Even efforts to use Minister Ruth Nankabirwa to arm-twist the President so that the man from Mityana gets back his job didn’t yield. Gen. Museveni turned his back on the whole thing after establishing that many of the things that had been alleged in favor of Martin Nsubuga, against the finance ministry, were false and untrue regarding the performance of URBRA under Mr. Nsubuga’s tenure as CEO.
The big man from Rwakitura was hurt that stuff done by NSSF had been depicted to him as achievements for Martin Nsubuga-led URBRA. Museveni sought a 2nd opinion from Matia Kasaija, who, in writing, indicated to him it was all kiwanis/fake. The president became so annoyed and never allowed anyone coming to plead for the now-fired URBA CEO.
REFUSING TO LEAVE:
Even when he was in court battling board members for not renewing his contract (which, by the way, is their right), Mr. Nsubuga was holding onto the keys to the office of URBRA CEO, which he has never surrendered. He uses those keys to access the office on the 4th floor as often as he wants, and he has never handed them over to anyone, prompting the Ag CEO to find where to work from.
The same Martin Nsubuga is yet to surrender and hand over the URBRA laptop and also enjoyed the CEO’s official vehicles for as long as he wanted and only abandoned it in the headquarters buildings’ parking basement after it developed mechanical problems, which his former employer wasn’t prepared to spend on fixing.
He was removed and blocked from the top management WhatsApp forum and mailing list, but that never stopped him from continuing to hold onto and occupy the office at level 4. The official documents relating to the CEO office were all removed, and only empty cabins and chairs and tables were left.
Even the support staff for the CEO’s office were withdrawn, effectively crippling him, but still Martin Nsubuga stayed put. In order to avoid creating chaotic scenes and bad publicity for URBRA, the board has played it cool and let him carry on with his defiance for now, 6 months.
The finance ministry hoped the man would ease out now that his efforts to bounce back as CEO through the court application haven’t yielded, but the man has continued coming around to use this public office to do his own things since he can no longer transact any business for and on behalf of URBRA. The whistleblower suggests that Parliament compel Matia Kasaija, as line minister, to explain why all this has been happening and the board members haven’t found it prudent to change locks so as to prevent Mr. Nsubuga from continuing to access this public space.
The whistleblower also proposes that Parliament compel Matia Kasaija and the URBRA board to run newspaper adverts conspicuously indicating that Martin Nsubuga is no longer their employee so that no one gets to be misled that he is still a URBRA man merely because he continues coming to sit in the same office space he occupied before ceasing to be CEO. Gratefully, he doesn’t earn any salary anymore, though he appears in some of the annual editions of the pensioners’ journal as CEO because at that time he still was.
Efforts to contact Nsubuga for comments proved futile when he didn’t pick his calls repeatedly.
