By Abubaker Mayemba & Johnson Taremwa
Photographs of dignitaries and presidents taken from last week's Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) heads of state summit at State House, Entebbe suggest the meeting was a tremendous success.
But behind-the-scenes accounts of the June 20 to 22 event offer a contrasting narrative. The summit was convened largely to provide an opportunity for all 10 countries using the River Nile waters to agree on how to equitably use the resource. However, the first signs that all was not well emerged when news filtered through that Sudan president Omar al-Bashir and his South Sudan counterpart Salva Kiir would skip the event.
Only Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Ethiopia's Hailemariam Desalegn showed up for the June 22 summit, where they spent five hours meeting behind closed doors with their host, President Museveni. State House sources told The Observer that all 10 heads of state that share the River Nile waters were invited and had promised to attend in person.
"When they responded positively, we even booked presidential suites in all five-star hotels in Kampala, paid and deployed heavily," said a source.
Two days to the summit, the source said, State House got official communication from some embassies, announcing that their presidents would not attend the summit, but would, instead, send representatives.
"The first call came from Kenya, followed by Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi and Tanzania," said another source, adding that the embassies did not give clear reasons why their presidents were turning down the invitations at the last minute.
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