Moses Ali: What he wrote before his death
With Moses Ali’s passing, Uganda has lost more than a decorated soldier and experienced politician. It has lost a witness to many defining moments in the country’s history.
David Mukholi. (File)
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OPINION
Gen. Moses Ali’s death closes the chapter on one of Uganda’s most consequential military and political figures. It also brings into focus another important part of his legacy, namely the documentation of the history of the Nubi people and his efforts to secure their place in Uganda’s national story.
Many Ugandans knew Moses Ali as a soldier, cabinet minister, lawyer and veteran politician. Fewer know that he was also a historian of his own people. Through his book, The Odyssey of the Nubi: From Soldiers of the British Empire to Full Citizens in Uganda, he set out to correct the historical record on a community that helped shape Uganda, yet whose contribution was misunderstood, questioned or ignored.
The book is at once autobiographical, national and historical. While it inevitably reflects Ali’s own experiences as a Nubi, it reconstructs the journey of an entire people, from military recruits in the colonial era to recognised citizens of Uganda.
It is evident that, in his book, he combines lived experience with historical scholarship. Rather than relying on emotion or nostalgia, he supports his arguments with research, quotations from respected scholars and a detailed list of references. The scholarly approach lends credibility to a subject that has long attracted myths, political controversy and competing interpretations.
One quotation captures the central argument that Ali wanted history to remember. Citing the late Prof. Ali Mazrui, he reminds readers that: “The Nubi are not strangers, nor intruders in Uganda’s body politic, but part of the grander historical process that led to the creation of Uganda.”
This statement explains why he felt compelled to write the book. It is less a defence of the Nubi than an attempt to restore historical balance. Moses Ali recognised that many Ugandans continued to question the Nubi’s place in the country. Instead of demanding acceptance, he assembled historical evidence and invited readers to judge for themselves.
In doing so, he also quietly narrated his own journey. Although he never openly presented himself as the leader of Uganda’s Nubi community, the book effectively established him as one. By recording their history, future generations will inherit a documented identity rather than rely on oral tradition or political stereotypes.
His account challenges several deeply entrenched misconceptions. Drawing on historical sources, he demonstrates that the Nubi did not arrive in Uganda through Idi Amin, as is commonly believed. Their presence predated Amin by many years and was rooted in the military campaigns that accompanied British colonial expansion in East Africa.
Moses Ali also revisited the origins of the Nubi themselves. Relying on Ali Mazrui’s scholarship, he explains that they emerged from the Mahdist uprising in Sudan, when Emin Pasha assembled military units from different ethnic communities. Through military service and the adoption of colloquial Arabic, these groups gradually developed what became the Ki-Nubi language and identity.
Emin Pasha, as governor of Equatoria under the Ottoman-Egyptian administration in the 19th century, ruled a territory encompassing parts of modern-day South Sudan and northern Uganda.
Other historical accounts that Moses Ali examined describe the Nubi as descendants of colonial soldiers of the Egyptian Army, or as former combatants under Emin Pasha who remained in the region after the fall of Khartoum in 1885. Whatever the interpretation, his conclusion remained consistent: the Nubi were products of history rather than accidental migrants.
He further argues that after their recruitment into British and German colonial armies, the Nubi became indispensable in the construction and consolidation of colonial administration in Uganda. Their settlement in Uganda, he states, was not an act of asylum but recognition of the role they had played in extending British authority.
His analysis becomes particularly compelling when discussing post-independence Uganda. The transition from colonial rule transformed the Nubi from valued military personnel into a community whose citizenship was increasingly questioned. Moses Ali observed that, at independence in 1962, the Uganda Army remained predominantly composed of soldiers from northern Uganda, West Nile and the Nubi.
He revealed that Prime Minister Apollo Obote became uncomfortable with the military dominance of the Nubi and other West Nile communities, leading to shifts in recruitment and promotion that increasingly favoured Acholi and Langi officers. At the same time, Amin strengthened his own support base among the Kakwa and the Nubi. Moses Ali interprets these developments as part of a broader political struggle in which the Nubi often found themselves caught between competing centres of power.
His own enlistment into the Uganda Army in 1968 placed him at the centre of that turbulent history. Consequently, his narrative offers not only historical analysis, but also eyewitness testimony.
Perhaps the book’s most significant contribution is its rejection of simplistic narratives about the Nubi. Moses Ali discloses that successive governments relied heavily on the military skills of the Nubi whenever it was expedient to do so, but later marginalised the same community once political circumstances changed.
The exception, in his assessment, was the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M). Having allied his Uganda National Rescue Front with the NRA/M during the struggle against Obote, Moses Ali regarded the NRM Government as the administration that finally resolved the long-standing citizenship question by recognising the Nubi as one of Uganda’s indigenous communities.
This conclusion explains the significance of the book’s title. The Odyssey of the Nubi: From Soldiers of the British Empire to Full Citizens in Uganda was not merely the story of one ethnic community. It is the story of belonging, identity and recognition after generations of uncertainty.
With Moses Ali’s passing, Uganda has lost more than a decorated soldier and experienced politician. It has lost a witness to many defining moments in the country’s history. Fortunately, before his death, he recorded one chapter that only someone who had lived it could fully tell. His greatest gift may, therefore, be that he preserved the history of a people whose contribution to Uganda’s formation might otherwise have remained misunderstood, contested or forgotten.
X-@dmukholi1 dmukholi@newvision.co.ug