By Frank Kamuntu
Kampala: President Museveni on 16, December 2020 replaced Maj. Gen. Sabiiti Muzeyi with Maj. Gen. Paul Lokech as the new deputy IGP after having been on a special assignment to monitor on behalf of the guarantors of the South Sudan peace process, the assembling, screening, demobilization and integration of the armed forces of South Sudan.
Today, Lokech has been vetted by parliamentary appointments committee after giving an account of the operations he has led both in Uganda and abroad and showed tactics of how he is ready to crush barriers that have been affecting Uganda Police’s operations.
About Maj.Gen.Lokech
Born in Acholi sub-region, Paul Lokech, is a senior military officer at the rank of Major General, in the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), who was appointed Deputy Inspector General of Police of the Uganda Police Force on 16 December 2020.
Between November 2017 and December 2019, he served on special assignment “to monitor on behalf of the guarantors of the South Sudan peace process, the assembling, screening, demobilization and integration of the armed forces of South Sudan”.
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Before that, he served as Chief of Staff of the UPDF Air Force, for a period of five months, from 11 July 2019, until 11 December 2019.
Prior to that, from December 2018 until July 2019, he was Commandant of Uganda Rapid Deployment Capability Centre (URDCC), in Jinja, in the Eastern Region of Uganda a position he secured in December 2018.
His military career includes service in various leadership capacities, including two tours as the Commander of the Uganda contingent to Somalia, as part of the AMISOM peace-keeping force. The first tour was between 2011 and 2012. His second Somalia rotation was from 2017 until 2018.
During his first tour, Lokech commanded Battle Groups Eight and Nine, responsible for ejecting Al-Shabaab militants from Mogadishu in 2011.
Before his second tour in Somalia, he was the Commanding Officer of the Second UPDF Division, based at Makenke Barracks, in Mbarara, in the Western Region of Uganda. He has previously served as the Military Attaché at Uganda’s Embassy to Russia, based in Moscow.
He has also served as part of Uganda’s peace-keeping forces in South Sudan. He was part of Operation Safe Haven (OSH), a UPDF operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo intended to neutralize the rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
