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Recently, staff of Mega fm Gulu petitioned COSASE Chairman Medard Segona calling on him to come to their rescue. The staff are angry that their former station manager Jovia Irene Atek has continued to be in charge holding herself out as the owner of the station, long after she was fired by the governing board of UBC which 100% owns Mega fm Gulu on behalf of the GoU.
Jovia Irene Ateke was fired in 2022 after UBC/Mega fm land was grabbed and it’s land title went missing after she had refused to hand it over to the governing board headed by fountain publishers boss Mzee James Tumusiime. She defied board summons to come to Kampala and explain herself which led to her termination, which she has since defied.
Dated 15th January 2025, the staff letter was also copied to Minister Chris Baryomunsi whose ICT ministry supervises UBC, and by extension Mega fm, on behalf of the government.
The staff fault the line state minister Godfrey Kabbyanga and permanent secretary Amina Zawedde for simply looking on and doing nothing as Ateke, a veteran NRM media activist based in Gulu, takes over public property and going on to convert it into a private company owned by herself and others.
Established in August 2002, Mega fm was originally funded by the UK government through DFID which later on handed it over to the government. The idea was to promote communication and access to the same by Acholi communiy members who had been displaced from their homes by the LRA war.
The government wanted a radio that would be dedicated to the pacification and reconstruction of northern Uganda through accessing people to quality and accurate information about peace efforts. Available documentation shows that DFID handed over Mega fm to government which put it under UBC following the enactment of the relevant Act in 2005.
The Act and the vesting order of 2006 vested all former radio Uganda and UTV property under UBC and that’s how Mega fm Gulu became part of the UBC portfolio, according to MD David Winstone Agaba. In 2011, a man called Paul Kihika came around UBC and got himself the MD job.
Kihika syndicated with a group of NRM media activists in Gulu who had campaigned for President Museveni, to equally impact Mega fm Gulu. Museveni was excited having won Acholi and other parts of northern Uganda for the first time against Kizza Besigye. This media activists group was led by Jovia Irene Ateke who manipulated people in the corridors of power at Broadcasting House, which is the UBC headquarters in Kampala.
Riding on the excited mood president Museveni was in, Ateke got herself the position of station manager for Mega fm Gulu and this was in 2011. She got the job after her predecessor David Okidi was soiled before people in government as Ateke’s lobbyists manipulated the Board at UBC at that time.
Okidi was transferred back to Kampala to work under UBC Red Channel. Otherwise under Okidi, Mega fm had done so well, according to Winstone Agaba in one of his letters to State House, to the extent that the business was breaking even, self-sustaining itself, collecting enough revenue and seemingly viable. All the revenue would be deposited on it’s own bank account “Radio Uganda-Mega Fm.”
In 2022, it emerged that UBC land in the Gulu City suburb of Bobi was being interfered with without Ateke, the station manager, doing anything to protect government property. It turned out she had picked the land title for 80 acres of UBC public land from the lands ministry Gulu offices and kept it at her home instead of passing it on to her superiors at UBC headquarters in Kampala. When Board members insisted, she began feuding them and using her political connections in NRM government to bad mouth them.
She was summoned to appear before the board for some sanctioning. Under the leadership of the much respected James Tumusiime of Fountain Publishers, board members waited for Ateke in vain. She didn’t show up on the appointed day; neither did she communicate to anyone.
Having been patient with her for all that time, in January 2024, the UBC board met and resolved to terminate her services as Mega fm station manager. She refused to quit and instead came up with her own documentation challenging the UBC or government of Uganda ownership of Mega fm.
She declared herself the overall boss and owner of Mega fm and even came up with paper work changing it to a private company trading as Mega Community Broadcast Ltd. The available URSB documentation shows who her other co-owners are in this criminal enteprise. These are listed as Anthony Akol, Amuru RDC Stephen Latek Odong, Musa Khalid and Kato Ahmad Hassan.
These are supposed to be her co-shareholders and directors under the company called Mega Community Broadcast Ltd, all of whom the UBC management officially dismisses as mere fraudsters. They continue to operate in government or UBC property in Gulu city and even use government broadcasting equipment to run what Ateke describes to be a private company.
She has also fired staff of Mega fm Gulu besides writing to all advertisers directing them to stop dealing with UBC headquarters in Kampala. She has also opened up her own bank account where advertisers must be paying what is due. It’s Mega fm Ltd as 1140000001742 at Housing Finance Bank Gulu branch.
On 28th December last year, Ateke wrote to Betty Arach who was administrator for the Mega Fm liaison office in Kampala inside the UBC complex; declaring that the same had been closed and would no longer serve as Mega fm office.
She has since opened up her own small office in Kampala to which all Mega fm clients, including MTN Uganda and several government MDAs, have been directed to go and disregard the Mega fm offices at UBC headquarters.
In his audit report, which Cosase will soon be processing and inviting ICT Ministry bosses to explain themselves about, Mega fm is indicated to have made annual sales averaging Ugx1.5bn a year.
Not less than Ugx800m of this is annually collected and much of it is what Ateker, who even the line minister Godfrey Kabbyanga fears, has been diverting to run her private company which claims to be the owners of Mega fm. One of the Cosase MPs says that Kabbyanga and Zawedde both fear to touch Ateke because she is rumored to be close to a powerful UPDF general based in Gulu.
In March 2024, UBC MD Agaba dispatched a team of 6 officials to go and examine the state of affairs at Mega fm Gulu. He had been directed by Kabbyanga to do something about the situation. Team members got confronted by Amuru RDC Stephen Latek Odong who accused them of trespassing on private property owned by Jovia Irene Ateke under her company Mega Broadcast Ltd.
Odong Latek made it clear the radio is for a private company and not government’s. He told them that the private company has its board and management which isn’t answerable to UBC boss Agaba. This clearly contradicted the vesting order of 2006 which the president used to authorize UBC to take over all property that originally belonged to UTV and radio Uganda. Ateke was served the UBC board letter terminating her as station manager but she defied it and stayed put.
Calling Odong Latek’s interference and actions criminal and unacceptable, the UBC MD has since written to presidency permanent secretary Hajji Yunnus Kakande calling on him to punish the Amuru RDC Stephen Atek Odong for abetting and aiding Jovia Irene Ateke’s criminal activities which have included falsifying documents to alter Mega fm ownership from government to a group of private individuals including herself.
The UBC MD calls on the permanent secretary to instigate criminal proceedings against RDC Odong Latek for using his office to provide cover to someone out to grab public property. Agaba’s letter was copied to Minister Chris Baryomunsi and Milly Babalanda too.
In their letter to Segona, the Mega fm staff say that their salaries are no longer paid on time (if paid at all) because of the chaos the ICT ministry’s failure to crack the whip on Joviah Ateke has created. That many staff can’t pay rent, school fees for their children or even bank loans. They also talk about mental problems which have been caused to many of them by Ateke who keeps threatening to knife them.
The aggrieved staff also wonder why the ICT Ministry, which took over the Mega fm crisis from UBC so that their own Interim Advosory Board handles, hasn’t done anything to stop Irene Joviah Ateke from closing down the Mega fm liaison office at UBC headquarters.
That the closure of that office has complicated solicitation for Mega fm adverts in Kampala from where 80% of the station’s revenue used to come. They also call on COSASE Chairman Medard Segona to inquire into all the threatening emails the terminated Irene Joviah Ateke has been sending to several advertizers, including government MDAs, calling on them to stop dealing with UBC headquarters while claiming that Mega fm is no longer part of UBC.
As they prepare to interface with the ICT ministers especially Kabbyanga and the permanent secretary Amina Zawedde over the auditor general report findings, the Cosase MPs are ready to make ICT ministry officials sweat for failing to bring to an end Jovia Irene Ateke’s criminal activities targeting government property namely Mega fm and all its property in Gulu.
The MPs are specifically furious at the ICT ministry for sidelining the UBC board and management from the anti-Ateke war regarding the proprietorship of Mega fm. The PS and Kabbyanga are accused of replacing the UBC management’s role with that of the Interim Advisory Board (IAB) which Kabbyanga single-handedly created. This IAB was charged with working with Police and the President’s office to ensure that Jovia Irene Ateke and her backers like Amuru RDC Stephen Latek Odong are decisively crashed.
They were also supposed to write to the IGP to get Police deployment to forcefully kick out Joviah Irene Ateke from Mega fm premises. But this IAB board hasn’t done much because its members, led by Principal Communications Officer Pius Mwinganisa and the ministry’s internal audit head Patrick Ohaya Mawadri, fear Joviah Irene Ateke very much because of her rumored connections to the powerful UPDF general based in Gulu.
The duo of Mwinganisa and Mawadri will be required by the Cosase MPs to also explain why they can allow themselves to be filled with too much fear instead of standing up to protect government property.
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