Two years after Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni announced that the country’s army had killed the leader of the ADF terrorist group, Meddie Nkalubo, it has now emerged that he is still alive.
In September 2023, Museveni declared that Ugandan forces had eliminated Nkalubo during an airstrike on ADF camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He made the announcement during a national television address, citing intelligence provided by Maj. Gen. James Birungi, who was then head of military intelligence in Uganda.
However, after two years, it has been revealed that Meddie Nkalubo was not killed.
The truth came to light following the arrest of Sheikh Hamza Lyavala, who is accused of collaborating closely with ADF and of feeding Ugandan security agencies with false intelligence about the group.
Sheikh Lyavala was arrested by the Ugandan military and accused of supplying fabricated espionage information.
A Ugandan security official explained that Lyavala had earned the trust of intelligence agencies by regularly providing sensitive details about ADF operations—information few others could access.
However, it was later discovered that Lyavala had exploited this trust to mislead the intelligence services and anti-terrorism units, feeding them false information, including claims that led President Museveni to wrongly announce Nkalubo’s death.
Sources say that after Museveni made the public announcement, it was later confirmed that Meddie Nkalubo was alive and had continued leading ADF terrorist operations in eastern DRC.
During Lyavala’s arrest, the Ugandan army accused him of working with Nkalubo to deceive the intelligence community into believing that Nkalubo had been killed.
