Powerful personality who as PM twice failed Uganda

12 October 2005

By Michael Holman

Apollo Milton Obote, first prime minister of an independent Uganda, had a unique claim to fame. Alone among African leaders, he won back at the ballot box in 1980 the office he had lost in a coup nine years earlier to Idi Amin. Unfortunately for Uganda, both his sessions in office proved disastrous, and the country is still recovering from his malign legacy.