All I want is Justice for the coffee farmers – Kabushenga

What started as a normal X (Twitter) post exposing the fraud of 41-year old Nelson Tugume, the head of Coffee Investment Consortium of Uganda (CICU) last week on Tuesday, has turned out to be one of the biggest scandals.

Robert Kabushenga, the former Chief Executive Officer for Vision Group, has consistently revealed on his X platform how Tugume scammed the President and made off with taxpayers money amounting to billions of shillings.

His consistent lengthy posts have not gone unnoticed as the President in the cabinet meeting on Monday this week, asked the Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation to follow-up with the accountability for the sum of Sh37b given to CICU last year for value addition to Uganda’s Coffee.

Kabushenga, welcomed the news of the accountability because he says the funds was stolen by Tugume and his close associates since it was not used for its intended purpose.

He also appealed to his fellow coffee farmers to come together to pin Tugume whom he accuses of using them (coffee farmers) as a hook to steal public funds.

Kabushenga said that he is after justice for the coffee farmers across the country who should be the direct beneficiaries of the government’s initiatives aimed at developing coffee value chain in the country.

However, Tugume has rubbished Kabushega’s allegations branding them as ‘baseless allegations’ and threatened to drag him to court to court if he does not offer a public apology.

“Coffee Investment Consortium Uganda (CICU) calls on Robert Kabushenga  to retract, correct, and apologise for his malicious social media comments that are false, defamatory, and highly damaging. Failure to do so will cause CICU to support legal action for defamation….trade libel, and intentional interference with business relations and prospects of one of its founding members,” Tugume wrote on his CICU X social media platform.

Kabushenga said that he will be happy to have his day with Tugume in Court rather than apologizing because he is well aware of his dubious acts which directly affects the 12 million Ugandans who live off Coffee.

Tugume has closely worked with Odrek Rwabogo, the head of Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development (PACEID) among other highly connected people.