Brigadier Odongo: East Africa’s own mercenary who planned Coups in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo
His official name was Stephen Ochieng Amoke.
But the notorious coups plotter was infamously known as Brigadier Odongo.
Brigadier Odongo is perhaps the only Kenyan who played a key role in Yoweri Museveni’s guerilla group, the National Resistance Army.
Reports have that Kaguta Museveni was using Stephen Odongo as a spy within Obote’s government.
However, the Bulgaria trained Kenyan revolutionary was quickly discarded by Kaguta as soon as Yoweri Museveni succeeded in overthrowing Milton Obote.
Brigadier Odongo thrived in rebellions and had even trained his own mercenaries for hire.
From Uganda he moved to Rwanda to assist Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to fight against Juvenal Habyarimana.
It is because of him and his friend Patrick Wangamati, a former Ford Kenya nominated Member of Parliament that a group of Kenyans especially Bukusus served as mercenaries in Paul Kagame’s rebel group RPF.
By 1995, Museveni had brought Odongo back to the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) and was allegedly trying to use him and Wangamati to overthrow President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya.
The attempted coup against Moi was executed through a short lived guerrilla group called February Eighteen Resistance Army (FERA).
FERA or F18RA was named after the day the Kenyan Freedom Fighter Dedan Kimathi was executed, which was on February 18, 1957.
But due to the infighting between Odongo and Wangamati over leadership, the group collapsed.
With time Museveni was again to fall out with the Brigadier. This was after it was claimed that some of his weapons had been found among Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) militias.
Meanwhile Moi had already banned him from setting foot in Kenya even as he became sickly.
He was eventually assisted by General Olesegun Obasanjo to secure asylum in Ghana where he lived briefly before making his way to Zaire to help his friend Laurent Kabila to overthrow President Mobutu Sese Seko.
Unfortunately Odongo’s health had become worse.
His hopes were further dampened when Laurent Kabila was assassinated shortly after taking power in the DR Congo.
Brigadier Odongo eventually died in 2004 and was buried in a cemetery in Kinshasa.
There were only four people at his funeral. A priest, a relative who had travelled all the way from Kenya and DR Congo’s Director of Intelligence and the DRC Director of military intelligence.
Following Odongo’s death one of the Kenyan newspapers asked President Museveni’s younger brother Lieutenant General Salim Saleh whether he knew Odongo.
Lieutenant Saleh responded by also inquiring, “Is he still alive, that man? What happened to him? Anyway, I knew him, but I do not want to talk about it now, there are better things to discuss.”