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Idi Amin (c. 1923–August 16, 2003), who became known as the "Butcher of Uganda" for his brutal, despotic rule as the President of Uganda in the 1970s, is perhaps the most notorious of Africa's post-independence dictators. Amin seized power in a military coup in 1971, ruled over Uganda for eight years, and imprisoned or killed at least 100,000 of his opponents. He was ousted in 1979 by Ugandan nationalists, after which he went into exile.

Early Life

Idi Amin Dada Oumee was born around 1923 near Koboko, in the West Nile Province of what is now the Republic of Uganda. Deserted by his father at an early age, he was brought up by his mother, an herbalist and diviner. Amin was a member of the Kakwa ethnic group, a small Islamic tribe that had settled in the region.

Success in the King's African Rifles

Amin received little formal education. In 1946, he joined Britain's colonial African troops known as the King's African Rifles (KAR) and served in Burma, Somalia, Kenya (during the British suppression of the Mau Mau), and Uganda. Although he was considered a skilled soldier, Amin developed a reputation for cruelty and was almost cashiered on several occasions for excessive brutality during interrogations. Nevertheless, he rose through the ranks, reaching sergeant major before finally being made an effendi, the highest rank possible for a Black African serving in the British army. Amin was also an accomplished athlete, holding Uganda's light heavyweight boxing championship title from 1951 to 1960.

A Violent Start

As Uganda approached independence, Amin's close colleague Apollo Milton Obote, the leader of the Uganda People's Congress (UPC), was made chief minister and then prime minister. Obote had Amin, one of only two high-ranking Africans in the KAR, appointed as first lieutenant of the Ugandan Army. Sent north to quell cattle stealing, Amin perpetrated such atrocities that the British government demanded he be prosecuted. Instead, Obote arranged for him to receive further military training in the U.K.

Soldier for the State

On his return to Uganda in 1964, Amin was promoted to major and given the task of dealing with an army in mutiny. His success led to a further promotion to colonel. In 1965, Obote and Amin were implicated in a deal to smuggle gold, coffee, and ivory out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A parliamentary investigation demanded by President Edward Mutebi Mutesa II put Obote on the defensive. Obote promoted Amin to general and made him chief-of-staff, had five ministers arrested, suspended the 1962 constitution, and declared himself president. Mutesa was forced into exile in 1966 after government forces, under the command of Amin, stormed the royal palace.

Coup d'Etat

Idi Amin began to strengthen his position within the Army using the funds obtained from smuggling and from supplying arms to rebels in southern Sudan. He also developed ties with British and Israeli agents in the country. President Obote first responded by putting Amin under house arrest. When this failed to work, Amin was sidelined to a non-executive position in the Army. On January 25, 1971, while Obote was attending a meeting in Singapore, Amin led a coup d'etat, taking control of the country and declaring himself president. Popular history recalls Amin's declared title to be "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."

Amin was initially welcomed both within Uganda and by the international community. President Mutesa—fondly known as "King Freddie"—had died in exile in 1969, and one of Amin's earliest acts was to have the body returned to Uganda for a state burial. Political prisoners (many of whom were Amin followers) were freed and the Ugandan Secret Police was disbanded. At the same time, however, Amin formed "killer squads" to hunt down Obote's supporters.

Ethnic Purging

Obote took refuge in Tanzania, from where, in 1972, he attempted unsuccessfully to regain the country through a military coup. Obote supporters within the Ugandan Army, predominantly from the Acholi and Lango ethnic groups, were also involved in the coup. Amin responded by bombing Tanzanian towns and purging the Army of Acholi and Lango officers. The ethnic violence grew to include the whole of the Army, and then Ugandan civilians, as Amin became increasingly paranoid. The Nile Mansions Hotel in Kampala became infamous as Amin's interrogation and torture center, and Amin is said to have moved residences regularly to avoid assassination attempts. His killer squads, under the official titles of "State Research Bureau" and "Public Safety Unit," were responsible for tens of thousands of abductions and murders. Amin personally ordered the execution of the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, the chancellor of Makerere College, the governor of the Bank of Uganda, and several of his own parliamentary ministers.

Economic War

In 1972, Amin declared "economic war" on Uganda's Asian population, a group that dominated Uganda's trade and manufacturing sectors as well as a significant portion of the civil service. Seventy thousand Asian holders of British passports were given three months to leave the country, and the abandoned businesses were handed over to Amin's supporters. Amin severed diplomatic ties with Britain and "nationalized" 85 British-owned businesses. He also expelled Israeli military advisors, turning instead to Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gadhafi of Libya and the Soviet Union for support.

Leadership

Amin was considered by many to be a gregarious, charismatic leader, and he was often portrayed by the international press as a popular figure. In 1975, he was elected chair of the Organisation of African Unity (though Julius Kambarage Nyerere, president of Tanzania, Kenneth David Kaunda, president of Zambia, and Seretse Khama, president of Botswana, boycotted the meeting). A United Nations condemnation was blocked by African heads of state.

Hypomania

Popular legend claims that Amin was involved in blood rituals and cannibalism. More authoritative sources suggest he may have suffered from hypomania, a form of manic depression characterized by irrational behavior and emotional outbursts. As his paranoia became more pronounced, Amin imported troops from Sudan and Zaire. Eventually, less than 25 percent of the Army was Ugandan. Support for his regime faltered as accounts of Amin's atrocities reached the international press. The Ugandan economy suffered, with inflation eclipsing 1,000%.

Exile

In October 1978, with the assistance of Libyan troops, Amin attempted to annex Kagera, the northern province of Tanzania (which shares a border with Uganda). Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere responded by sending troops into Uganda, and with the aid of rebel Ugandan forces they were able to capture the Ugandan capital of Kampala. Amin fled to Libya, where he stayed for almost 10 years before finally relocating to Saudi Arabia. He remained there in exile for the remainder of his life.

Death

On August 16, 2003, Amin died in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The cause of death was reported as multiple organ failure. Although the Ugandan government announced that his body could be buried in Uganda, he was quickly buried in Saudi Arabia. Amin was never tried for his gross abuse of human rights.

Legacy

Amin's brutal reign has been the subject of numerous books, documentaries, and dramatic films, including "Ghosts of Kampala," "The Last King of Scotland," and "General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait." Often depicted in his time as an eccentric buffoon with delusions of grandeur, Amin is now considered one of history's cruelest dictators. Historians believe his regime was responsible for at least 100,000 deaths and possibly many more.

Yeye, the man is a monumental and colossal failure

dondigi:
I actually did today as I read about the Bermuda Triangle.

Thanks

Man's inhumanity to man

Flight 370 on march 8 2014 departed from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, the plane took off at 12:41 AM local time and reached a cruising altitude of 10,700 metres (35,000 feet) at 1:01 AM. The Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which transmitted data about the aircraft’s performance, sent its last transmission at 1:07 AM and was subsequently switched off. The last voice communication from the crew occurred at 1:19 AM, and at 1:21 AM the plane’s transponder, which communicated with air-traffic control, was switched off, just as the plane was about to enter Vietnamese airspace over the South China Sea. At 1:30 AM Malaysian military and civilian radar began tracking the plane as it turned around and then flew southwest over the Malay Peninsula and then northwest over the Strait of Malacca. At 2:22 AM Malaysian military radar lost contact with the plane over the Andaman Sea. An Inmarsat satellite in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean received hourly signals from flight 370 and last detected the plane at 8:11 AM.

Initial searches for the plane concentrated on the South China Sea. After it was determined that flight 370 had turned to the west shortly after the transponder was switched off, search efforts moved to the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. On March 15, a week after the plane had disappeared, the Inmarsat contact was disclosed. Analysis of the signal could not locate the plane precisely but did determine that the plane might have been anywhere on two arcs, one stretching from Java southward into the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia and the other stretching northward across Asia from Vietnam to Turkmenistan. The search area was then expanded to the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia on the southern arc and Southeast Asia, western China, the Indian subcontinent, and Central Asia on the northern arc. On March 24 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that, based on analysis of the final signals, Inmarsat and the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) had concluded that the flight crashed in a remote part of the Indian Ocean 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Australia. Thus, it was extremely unlikely that anyone on board survived.
The search for wreckage was hampered by the remote location of the crash site. Beginning on April 6, an Australian ship detected several acoustic pings possibly from the Boeing 777’s flight recorder (or “black box”) about 2,000 km (1,200 miles) northwest of Perth, Western Australia. Further analysis by the AAIB of the Inmarsat data also found a partial signal from the plane at 8:19 AM consistent with the location of the acoustic pings, the last of which were heard on April 8. If the signals were from flight 370, the flight recorder was likely at the end of its battery life. Further searches were conducted using a robotic submarine. However, the pings had been spread over a wide area, the submarine found no debris, and tests found that a faulty cable in the acoustic equipment could have produced the pings
Debris discovery
The first piece of debris was not found until July 29, 2015, when the right wing flaperon was discovered on a beach on the French island of Réunion, about 3,700 km (2,300 miles) west of the Indian Ocean area that was being searched by Australian authorities. Over the next year and a half, 26 more pieces of debris were found on the shores of Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Mauritius. Three of the 27 pieces were positively identified as coming from flight 370, and 17 were thought to have likely come from the plane. Two pieces came from the cabin interior, suggesting that the plane had broken up, but whether the plane broke up in the air or on impact with the ocean could not be determined. Study of the Réunion wing flaperon and a piece of the right wing flap found in Tanzania showed that the plane had not undergone a controlled descent; that is, the plane had not been guided to a water landing. Some researchers note that flight 370 could have struck the water vertically, a possibility in which the results of one modeling study conducted before the flaperon’s discovery suggests could explain the dearth of physical evidence. The debris locations were used to narrow the search area in the Indian Ocean, since some possible crash sites would have been unlikely to produce debris that would have drifted to Africa

The governments of Malaysia, Australia, and China called off the search for flight 370 in January 2017. An American company, Ocean Infinity, received permission from the Malaysian government to continue searching until May 2017, when the Malaysian Transport ministry announced that it would call off that search. In July 2018 the Malaysian government issued its final report on flight 370’s disappearance. Mechanical malfunction was deemed extremely unlikely, and “the change in flight path likely resulted from manual inputs,” but the investigators could not determine why flight 370 disappeared.

Bunmhi:
Yes
My first time of hearing about it I must confess.

There are hundreds of documentaries about Bermuda triangle on YouTube, you can check it out later

Bunmhi:
Yes
My first time of hearing about it I must confess.

Alright dear, we truly have some mysterious places on earth that even scientists can't explain the reason behind paranormal activities in those areas.

Simeony007:
If Crystal Palace no kill Man united today transfer Christmas money to my account

Lol, time will tell

Bunmhi:
Wow wow wow

You've never heard about it before?

Manchester United all the way.

brightisodje:
how will a sane man sponsor a lady at school and expecting her to marry him. Nigeria ladies don't play with opportunity. they believe they have pay you with sex in as much a higher bidder proposed to her she won't think twice. focus on your family members even if they won't appreciate your good do it more the happiness will definitely still remine in your family. Nigeria girls are scammers just like our politicians.

You are right bro, my niece own is still paining me, but thank God she's a family member.
Me and my brothers assisted her in uni from 100-400 level, one stupid boyfriend later hijacked her and she forgot her entire family, we didn't even get a thank you from her

Bigredmachine:
The man is a fool...

Why not marry the lady before sending her to school, or who don marry no dey go school...

At times some men behaves like they don't have choices in this life which is bad...

Always read the end from the beginning, now they have left u behind, u are lamenting

Abi oo, such people will abandon their family members

Sonnobax15:

A similar thing once happened to my elder bro friend...Na once the guy arrange some of him fellow close nigha men to track her reach her mama house......The luck wey the guy get na be say he dey keep all the tellerd wey he dey use send her money all those while for school......Na once she knee down and begin shed tears,dey beg...But the guy no gree forgive her..

Wetin pain the guy na be say she even send the guy invitation via WhatsApp......Las las,her mum gats raise money to settle the guy...

If I dey kind to you,no think say I be fool....just that,I dey naturally nice..

No body be mugu

We just have to learn from people's mistakes.
This nonsense has to stop

I just came across a story on Facebook today, a man was lamenting and seeking for advice on what to do, he's at his wit's end.
Here's the story, the man lost his wife at child's birth and after awhile he met another lady that assisted him in raising the child, he eventually had a soft spot for her and sent her to university with the hope of marrying the girl the moment she finishes from school.

The problem now is that the lady doesn't pick his calls like before, she hardly calls him and the man is nonplussed.

Why are ladies giving guys every justifiable reason not to help them
again?
Is this smartness or turpitude?

jetwonder:
no sir! no single sinner would be allow in heaven

That means 99% of people on earth will perish.

A lot of people nowadays both young and old, Christians and Muslims engage in premarital and extramarital affairs which is against God's commandment.

Will such people make heaven?

meobizy:
The worst are those who insult someone on an adult matter e.g. a thread about marriage which you gave advice from experience, only for you to later find out the person is yet to write JAMB or WAEC. So, a 14 - 17 year old teenager is telling you an advice which you have lived is rubbish based on which of his/her experience?

Payment to use this forum beforehand will make sense. That way only the serious-minded will populate here. The use of pictures should also get disabled. Too many children are happy posting memes and provide no useful contribution to topics. Twitter and Reddit have the best formats to encourage intelligent debates. Nairaland should follow their example.

I agree with you to some extent, but not wholeheartedly.

Knowledge and wisdom has nothing to do with age, it is possible for a young person to give a very good advice that even an elder cannot imagine, though such astute youngsters aren't many, it's just a handful of them that have such ability for ratiocination.

I'm a victim of bullying on this platform, it happened to me last week and I was really heartbroken, unfortunately there's nothing anybody can do about it than to tolerate such behaviour from juveniles here.
That is the negative aspect of easy access to smartphones and social media.

Mynd44:
Still illegal. Who gave then the power to do this?

Who found him guilty?

They took law into their own hands

Harry00:
It's the devil's pit

that's its nickname

Vanilla4:
A place where strange disappearance happened in the past. Planes flying there these days are not uncommon.

planes and ships still avoid that triangular area of water.

Vitamin17:
They don't have the required tech

in this 21st century with all the innovations and technological advancement?

INDUSTRIALFAN:
How do you know he was promising? Just asking o. Don’t beat me.

Read here Mr psychopath.
https://www.nairaland.com/6880469/sylvester-oromonis-father-weeps-he

Vitamin17:
Is just magnetism nothing like alien shit or wormholes

I agree, but why can't scientists prove it?

And when I commented about this story on another thread calling the deceased a promising boy, someone became unhappy and asked me what made me think so

toxtimmy:
The school go bribe police as police don hit jackpot... Watch as this case go disappear in like 1, 2, 3 go.

naija police can't be trusted for anything, but they better put aside their shenanigans on this situation.

walkbrazil4k:
Yes that is what happens,let them criticized, it means nothing, NOBODY CAN TELL YOU WHAT TO DO, REMEMBER THAT,STAND ON YOUR OPINION, only the law and the court can tell me what to do. I know many people from nairaland that are not registered,they can't deal with the wahala,they refused to register, fight back and then ignore, if you don't fight back they won't leave you alone

thanks bro, enjoy your night

Joelobioha:
A wormhole leading to another universe I suppose

it's possible, but I will go with the theory of electromagnetic interference that says earth's natural magnets may be the one interfering with compass and other sophisticated equipment thereby causing the ships and planes to change direction

Nicepoker:
Wait let me ask Jack sparrow.

lol

walkbrazil4k:
Yes, you need a tough skin to be online and be ready to push back bullies

I fought back but I was criticized for doing so, the entire thread got derailed.

Good, we demand for full investigation and those found guilty should be severely punished, his death breaks my heart.

Conner44:
Nairaland was a faceless forum for a while until Seun added the avatar feature to our profile page. That is where the usual folks upload their pictures.

The one that quizzes me is some known monikers who are in a habit of putting up theirs in the comment sections of various threads regularly

Yet nobody has ever come out to hail them out of familiarity. Imagine a person posting facial pictures weekly here on Nairaland for years and till today nobody has ever come out to say they know that person from church, school, neighborhood, work, dream, etc

Some of these faces end up on the front page or trending sections garnering thousands of views yet no single person recognizes these types of people who post their pictures for us to see. Maybe they’re staunch introverts or don’t have friends or family using smartphones. Maybe in reality they wear hijab or turbans to mask their faces lol but They have become Nairaland local celebrities

The day I mistakenly put up my photo on this website i know that my phone won’t rest because I’ve got many friends, colleagues and family who are fortunate enough to be educated and over half of them get dragged to Nairaland daily.

This platform is becoming very toxic, I guess it's one of the reasons people don't put their pictures here

walkbrazil4k:
It's called privacy and in 2021 where people can steal your identity and people on nairaland stay anonymous to abuse and insult people, lol, even some of the mods on nairaland are also faceless.we have many kids on nairaland I mean 15yr olds that abuse someone older than them, lol

And people on nairaland can abuse you if you post your picture, I remember what they did to saphhire before the mods removed the thread, nairaland is filled with people with no joy, maybe na buhari cause am, lol

But some people are just introverts and the problem is that Nigerians don't understand what privacy means if you come to my house with an invitation i have the right to shoot you it's called trespassing

You are right, some people are just too savage, sarcastic and satirical, I experienced it recently and I was really hurt, though it has nothing to do with my profile picture.

I created a thread to enlighten people about my tribe, but some mischievous persons hijacked it and lambasted my tribe severely.