KAMPALA-President Yoweri Museveni's son and Uganda People's Defence Force's (UPDF) Commander of Land Forces, Lieutenant General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has on Tuesday March 8, announced that he is retiring from the army after more than two decades of service.
Museveni’s son Lieutenant General Muhoozi Kainerugaba. (Photo by Courtesy).
Lieutenant General Muhoozi 47 made the announcement via his tweeter handle. "After 28 years of service in my glorious military, the greatest military in the world, I am happy to announce my retirement. Me and my soldiers have achieved so much! I have only love and respect for all those great men and women that achieve greatness for Uganda everyday," the powerful Ugandan First Son wrote on Twitter, a platform that has recently become his major tool of public communication.
Who is Lieutenant General Muhoozi?
Born in 1974 to President Yoweri Museveni and Janet Museveni, Muhoozi is the firstborn. He attended schools in Tanzania, Kenya and Sweden.After his father became president of Uganda in 1986, he attended Kampala Parents School, King's College Budo and St Mary's College Kisubi.
Muhoozi joined UPDF in the early 1990s, attracting outrage in the media after he was reportedly engaged in military operations without enlisting as a serviceman.
His father, President Museveni, later explained that Muhoozi was only a member of the vigilante force locally known as the Local Defence Unit.He later attended the University of Nottingham from 1996 until 1998.
Muhoozi formally joined the UPDF 1999 before being admitted at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst where he graduated in 2000, after which he was commissioned Second Lieutenant, a rank he held until May 2001 when former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi controversially promoted him to Major.
He also attended Egyptian Military Academy where he took both the company and battalion commanders’ courses as well as Kalama Armoured Warfare Training School.
He later took a one-year course at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, graduating in June 2008. Muhoozi has seen a meteoric rise through the ranks of the army to current Lieutenant-General and is also the Commander of Land Forces, the third-highest position in the military leadership.