FORT PORTAL, Uganda — A dispute over who will lead one of Uganda’s oldest traditional kingdoms escalated sharply this week, after the family of the late King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV rejected the royal clan’s selection of a state television anchor as his successor, arguing instead that the monarch’s own will names a son as his rightful heir.
The disagreement has split Tooro’s royal establishment days before King Oyo is due to be laid to rest, and has drawn in the kingdom’s prime minister, its military and members of the wider royal family.
A kingdom without a king
Uganda has been a republic since independence, but it retains several traditional kingdoms whose rulers hold no formal political power yet remain influential as custodians of culture and identity for millions of subjects.
Tooro, in the west of the country near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, is among the oldest.
King Oyo became the world’s youngest reigning monarch when he was crowned in 1995 at the age of three, following the sudden death of his father.
He led the kingdom through regents until he came of age, later becoming a United Nations goodwill ambassador known for his advocacy in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
He died on 27 August in the United States, where he had been undergoing treatment for cancer. He was 34 and had never married. His burial has been scheduled for Saturday — a date that would otherwise have marked the 31st anniversary of his coronation.
Clan names a TV anchor as king
Tooro’s succession is managed by the Babiito royal clan, which convenes a committee to select and present a new monarch. That committee announced on Wednesday that it had settled on Prince Edward Rukidi Kijanangoma — a news anchor and editor at Uganda’s state broadcaster, UBC, and a cousin of the late king — as Tooro’s next ruler.
The announcement did not go unchallenged for long. Within hours, Princess Ruth Komuntale, the late king’s sister, held a press conference to say the decision ran contrary to her brother’s own wishes. She said King Oyo’s will, dated 14 September 2022, explicitly named a biological son as his intended heir, should one exist at the time of his death.
A copy of the will shared by the kingdom’s spokesperson states that the king wished any lawfully recognised biological son to inherit the throne.
Queen Kemigisa, the king’s mother, went further in a statement issued early Thursday, accusing what she called a “self-appointed group of clan members” of pushing through a choice of king even after the will had reportedly been read to them.
She also alleged that Uganda’s military had withdrawn royal guards from the palace without warning and effectively confined the family to the premises.
Uganda’s military did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and members of the succession committee could not immediately be reached.
Questions over the existence of an heir
At the centre of the dispute is a son whose existence has not been independently confirmed. King Oyo was not publicly known to have fathered any children. Yet Tooro’s prime minister, Calvin Armstrong Rwomiire Akiiki, said in a social media post announcing the king’s death on 27 August that he had left behind “a Prince as his heir,” adding that the child’s identity would be disclosed “at the appropriate time.”
That claim has faced pushback from within the clan itself. Charles Kamurasi, head of the Babiito clan and chair of the succession committee, has said the clan has no knowledge of any biological child and was not informed of one prior to the prime minister’s announcement.
Also Read: King Oyo’s death raises questions over his final days and Tooro’s royal secrets
Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda, who is related to the royal family, wrote on X that the family had yet to produce a photograph of the purported son or provide details of the boy’s mother.
He also noted that, under Tooro custom, a king’s son can only succeed him if born to a wife formally recognised as queen — a status that has not been established in this case.
Calls for calm
Amid competing claims, Prime Minister Rwomiire Akiiki called for restraint from all parties on Thursday.
“There will be time to examine the will, to hear those advancing a different position, and to consider our customs, the applicable law and the proper institutions through which succession should be determined,” he said, urging that the process be handled “calmly and credibly” rather than through public confrontation before the king had even been buried.
With King Oyo’s funeral just days away, Tooro now faces the prospect of entering a new era without an agreed monarch — a rare and delicate moment for a kingdom that has cast itself as a symbol of continuity and cultural unity in western Uganda.
