All Ugandan presidents and leading Opposition figures have at one time or another fled into exile or were forcibly banished outside the country, with some dying there and their bodies being repatriated home for final internment.

While some made peace with the sitting government or successive ones and returned, others died in exile, and only their remains were flown back home to be buried, the exception being Idi Amin Dada, who died and was buried in Saudi Arabia.

So, the recent flight into exile by National Unity Platform (NUP) party leader Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, only fits into that old and sad tale of Uganda’s turbulent political history.

Before Bobi Wine was Col (rtd) Dr Kizza Besigye of the Reform Agenda political pressure group, who had given President Museveni his first real challenge since assuming power in 1986.

Dr Besigye, who said he was being hunted down by the military, beat their surveillance and slipped into exile in South Africa.

He later returned and ran in three subsequent presidential elections. Dr Besigye is currently incarcerated in Luzira Maximum Security Prison in Kampala pending trial over an alleged treason-related case.

Sir Edward Frederick Mutesa II

The late king of the Buganda Kingdom, and Uganda’s first non-executive president after Independence between 1962 and 1966, was first deposed and exiled to England by the British colonial regime in 1953.

He returned two years later in 1955. But his palace was attacked by government forces of Independent Uganda under Prime Minister Apollo Milton Obote in 1966, forcing him once more into exile in the UK, where he died in 1969.

His remains were returned by Amin to Uganda in 1971 and were buried at Kasubi Royal Tombs on the outskirts of Kampala City.

Idi Amin Dada

Following his overthrow in 1979 by Ugandan exile fighting groups backed by the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces (TPDF), Amin fled first to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia, where he lived until he died in August 2003. His body has never been repatriated to Uganda.

Apollo Milton Obote

Obote, a two-time Ugandan president, went into exile twice. First, in Tanzania, after he was ousted by his army commander Idi Amin in 1971 and lived in exile in Tanzania until 1979, after the Gen Tito Okello Lutwa-led military coup ended his second tenure in 1985, Obote fled to Zambia, where he lived until he died in October 2005. His remains were brought back home and buried at his ancestral home in Akokoro in Apac District.

Yusuf Kironde Lule

He was the popular choice of the Ugandan exiles who elected him during the Moshi Conference in Tanzania in 1979 to decide Uganda’s post-Amin leadership.

After serving for just 68 days as president, Lule was then forced out of office in June 1979 and went to live in exile in the United Kingdom in 1979.

He died there in 1985, and his remains were repatriated to Uganda and buried as a national hero at the Kololo Ceremonial Grounds in Kampala.

Godfrey Binaisa

He succeeded Lule and occupied office for only 11 months and was removed from power in 1980. Binaisa then lived in exile in the United States for many years before eventually returning to Uganda. He died in August 2010.

Tito Okello

After being ousted by the Yoweri Museveni-led guerrilla fighters, the National Resistance Army (NRA) in 1986, Gen Lutwa went into exile in several countries, including Kenya and Tanzania, before returning to Uganda in the 1990s.

He died in Uganda in June 1996 and was buried at his ancestral home in Namokora in Kitgum District. President Museveni, who still holds the reins of power, also had his stint of life in exile.

Like many Ugandans, he lived in Tanzania during the 1970s while organising resistance against Idi Amin. Later, during the Bush War against the Obote II regime, his family lived in Sweden while he crisscrossed Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and abroad.