A succession dispute has rocked Uganda’s Tooro royal family, with the mother of the late King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV alleging that she and other members of the royal household are being held against their will inside the palace.
Queen Mother Best Kemigisa said on Thursday that soldiers had removed the palace’s royal guards without notice and deployed troops around the palace.
“We cannot leave or receive people freely. We are under house arrest,” she said in a statement.
King Oyo, who died last month while receiving cancer treatment in the United States, ascended the throne at the age of three and reigned over the Tooro Kingdom for 31 years. He was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s youngest reigning monarch.
Although Uganda is a republic, the country officially recognises traditional kings, who largely serve as cultural leaders with limited political authority.
The latest dispute erupted after a selection committee from the Babiito royal clan announced on Wednesday that Prince Edward Rukidi Kijanangoma, a news anchor with the public broadcaster UBC, had been chosen to succeed his late cousin.
The decision was immediately challenged by Princess Ruth Komuntale, King Oyo’s sister, who accused “evil vultures” of conspiring against her and the Queen Mother.
Komuntale produced a will she said had been drafted by King Oyo in 2022, in which he allegedly designated “a biological son” as his heir, without naming the child.
The claim has surprised many within the Tooro elite, who say they were unaware that the late king had a son. The selection committee subsequently excluded the alleged heir from the succession vote.
Andrew Mwenda, a prominent Ugandan public commentator who hails from Tooro, questioned whether an unnamed biological son should automatically inherit the throne.
“A king cannot sleep with a prostitute on the street or a house maid, produce a son and it is hoisted onto the throne,” Mwenda said on X.
“This is not to suggest that Oyo did any of this. It is simply to say that he was not officially married, and if he left a son, Toro needs to know the mother and her background,” he added.
Mwenda is a close associate of President Yoweri Museveni’s son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s army chief and a prominent figure in the country’s political succession debate.
