Rev. Magumba
It is sad news about my Lecturer, fellow missionary, fellow Ugandan and Brother in Christ, at Uganda Christian University, from Bishop Tucker Theological College. A story was reported in the London Metro of of friday yesterday of a Ugandan Church of England Vicar, the Reverend Dr John Magumba, who was jailed for arranging at least 28 fake immigration marriages between Nigerian men and Eastern European women. He was in charge of three parishes in Rochdale and had also swindled church funds. He pleaded quilty to all the charges. He was found out when a large number of Nigerian men suddenly began to attend his churches and
registering for marriage with Eastern European women. Suspicion was raised about the high number of marriages he was presiding over when in that area, where hardly many people bother to get married in church and a lot of these wedded couples did not seem to have permanent addresses in the area and seemed to be coming from London.
It is unfortunate for he was one of the promising reverends, a bright man, born again, and was happily married the time I knew him. People fall in temptation and sin, but they confess, repent and ask for forgiveness. Surely, God forgives everyone who asks for that’s the very reason Jesus, the Christ came to earth, was crucified on the Cross, went to the grave, descended to hell and rose up from the grave triumphantly.
Church of Uganda has frustrated many reverends and from different dioceses and by various vicars, archdeacons, bishops and the powers that be. Others are lay people, lay leaders. Others are the relatives and friends of our church leaders who also mislead them. Many prosperous reverends have been dropped off and many have gone abroad. In particular, Rev. Dr. Magumba is from the once embattled Busoga Diocese under the heavy hand of Bishop Cyprian Bamwoze. Many of us live abroad by choice so as to stay in the Church. Many have left Church of Uganda those who could not tolerate. Many have left with all the good training we get from church of Uganda churches and schools and have started churches and schools of their own and have prosperous.
What I am saying are open secrets. Many organisations have sprung up as alternatives such as African Evangelistic Association where we had reverends who were not bound by the Church.
I am appealing to all Church loving people, all Christians, all born Again Christians, to get more involved in church affairs, speak up, correct, encourage, uphold, and help clean up wherever it is needed. No one is above God. No one is above Jesus Christ. Jesus is the head of our Church and we are His Body. Get involved and pray for the Holy Spirit to lead in all the choosing of our leaders in our churches.
Out of respect for my God Almighty, our church leaders, my family and relatives, I choose not to give details. If you want the details, send me email and I will tell you.
On another note, many reverends do not speak out against the atrocities dictator Museveni and his cohorts how he has destroyed our country. they hide their heads in the sand and think that the danger will pass. When it passes then they will go back to Uganda ans carry on business as usual. Jesus, whom we follow did not agree with the status quo. He overturned them, they were not comfortable, “yabatuuzanga obufofofo”. Many are abroad as economic refugees. But they say nothing, they don’t raise up these issues in their host countries. God has raised us up , He has called us and anointed us to be a voice for the voiceless. Rev. Dr. Magumba was highly esteemed in UK, and at Oxford, where I also was privileged to be. I don’t live in UK, so I don’t know if he has done something, but we have not heard about him.
When God puts you in a position of responsibility, He expects you to deliver. In the mission to the suffering, marginalised, oppressed, poor and voiceless. Maybe God wants to remind Rev. Dr. that he had a mission and was raised up for that. For that Brother is known worldwide. It is unfortunate that he has fallen out of grace. He could have done so much to make money instead of that dubious course he took. This is caution to everyone who is using the name of God in vain. God always protects His name. It is a commandment not to use God’s name in vain. The good thing is that God does not give up on us. Rev. Dr. will chill out in prison and may come back to his senses why he was called and raised up.
My prayer is that Rev. Dr. may be redeemed since he has fallen and that God may raise him up once more.
“And if it seems evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve;
Whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood,
or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell:
but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15
Rev. Jessica Nakawombe
UAH forumist in USA
Comments
@Rev Nakawombe, Thank ufor the info about Rev Magumba, but i would like to ask you if you were able to speak to magumba before he was imprisoned and also to know wot exactly he did. Sometimes in europe people from africa are given negative press and i know for sure that if Jesus was here he would have helped the poor and the oppressed. All wot Magumba did was to do his job of being a minister to the poor and he was not the last man to stamp the passports of the people he wedded. I do not blame magumba if for a minute all wot he did was his job. Please rev nakawombe we shd stop giving a negative press to men of God like magumba just because the bazungu dont like or approve of wot he did, but just ask yourself wot would jesus do.? And as for the money we are told that he stole thats also rubbish we are told that he conducted the funerals in good faith and these were not done on church premises but the church of england has old laws and rules in that wherever these funerals are conducted all the mabugo should be taxed even if the person burried was not a parishoner or a christian. magumba did not steal money, the money he took belonged to him. but abazungu wano bakuwaliliza ogamba nti oli guilty nebakulimba nti if u say you are guilty we wont take you to prison and thats wot they diid to magumba its a shame bayaye nyoooo.
I do not quite understand the line of argument here. I mean, the dear old Reverend admitted his guilt and has been convicted and sentenced to incarceration – bad in itself and indeed regrettable! I do pray for strength for him to endure the consequences with more ease and reversion to God. However, what i do not understand is the import Rev. Nakawombe attempts to give to this, against the “tight fist” of some bishops here in Uganda. I would like to know if in her view, the Rev. Magumba case would have been different or even averted, had every Church of Uganda bishops been more tolerant. Please sensitise me more.
What exactly are you insinuating in this article dear Rev.Jessica!!?? Is it Museveni who drove the Reverand into runing a scam??
How a very resourceful, greatly gifted and much beloved man like Canon Magumba ended up like this, reminds me of the kutomera of Jeffrey Archer. Of course unlike the English milord, a newly arrived African Christian zealot with a wife and six children, runs his race well encumbered, – for the fourth feature they may not share, is that we can say without the fear of contradiction that Canon Magumba is sincerely surrendered to seeking to know and to serve God, within the ‘while-still-in-this-meat’ human limitations of sometimes taking oneself back. Having known him very closely before, these particular irreducible acts, which we regret, also remind me however of when the nun Sister Simplice in Les Miserables who ‘had never told a lie in her life’ finally pityingly told two big ones to Javert and his unmerciful dogs in order to protect Valjean from being defeated by the enforcers of the law. My first impressions of the unforgiving cogs of the British criminal courts are actually from the writings of Dickens. There are not many British-based modern TV legal dramas but in all the ones I’ve seen which are or should be a dramatized depiction of what actual uk criminal litigation is like, there are also very few chance escapes from the clutches of the law(!!) that one might otherwise find in dramatized trials based on life in other places. (Good for you by the way Britain!! But better polish up your other morality as well, on the sodomy, lesbian and other sides) It is very common in these films to find someone being crushed with the full penalty. This hard face of British criminal justice in these films would stand out even to a person not trained in the law, or not inclined to the value of clemency by Scripture and persons like Hugo, Hardy and Dickens, because they even go against the films industry plot-stereotypes of ‘He’ll make it, he’ll make it, he’ll make it, he’ll make it, Oh! he doesn’t make it.’, or ‘He can’t make it, he can’t make it, he can’t make it, Oh! he makes it!’, and others. – Apparently In the UK, prejudice and retribution usually will err on the side of humbling their quarry (than that something mitigated, or the image of a popular writer might be saved, or et cetera). Not unlikely because the juries and judges are also colder (as the community from which they come/which influences their conduct, has for hundreds of years been reputed to be!), – and that they also pander less to certain popularized egalitarianism and pressure factors that enable juries and judges in other places, – in real life and in the dramas, to explore mercy, which as Abraham Lincoln pointed out, is always (aaaaalways) better, than ‘strict justice’.
The above thoughts of the mutaka of January 30th actually reflect those permissive ‘Live and let live’/'Man eateth where he worketh’ easy strokes of grey to which people living under African governments and judicial systems and African judicial discretion, have now become accustomed. – Where a senior cabinet member can steal over 50 million euros (or over 200 Billion shillings), be discovered and confronted, and they actually jeer at and taunt the public and the querying public institutions over the issue. As an Allen pointed out somewhere however, “Custom is the badge and actual substance of all positive law”, and the African customs in the community from which the Canon comes are not honoured on the shores where he was serving. Infact while by Allen’s principle they as customs bore the honour and credence of law in the old African societies, the colonial Judicature Acts dubbed them ‘All customs and practices repugnant to natural justice and good conscience’!!! Ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha! So, this ‘clash of (cultural) codes’ is something future missionaries should mind well. – Is that not one of the purposes of Punishment anyway!! Ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha! They should be more circumspect in the management of the Joseph-turned-pharaoh’s-prime-minister angles of their service. The freely admitted 1John 3:21 animus of their African scripts would not be available as a plea.
Fact is, the good Canon broke the law. The prosperity of the pounds-counting British society which was being sought by these unhappy persons, may have been constructed by criminal and purulent means, but, by the means he employed, there were actually laws within the Galatians 5:22-23 sense, protecting that perceived felicity from the reach of those whom Dr. Magumba’s moves of kindness and goodness were intended to redeem.
I am greatly consoled, not by the fact that life lived in an African community would very knowingly forgive and even reward/give thank-you gifts for his help(as its Nigerian exponents did in these cases), – not by the otherwise improbable chance for the prisoners to hear from a person as persuaded as he is of the true gospel, not even that, as Rev. Jessica correctly points out, faults abandoned and renounced (Like those of the New Testament’s Paul of Tarsus who previous hunted down and killed Christians) are greatly and invaluably strengthening factors in spiritual life, but rather that (and I can assure those who did not know him at all before), from knowing him, this exposure, his admissions, – the cruel pruning knife here of his Father’s love… It is like the dandelion in Schaffer’s poem which being walked on, losing its beauty and dying, can birth ‘a whole new generation’ of even more beautiful, even more god-fearing, even more wise ‘flyers’; It is the ‘He that is down need fear no fall’ of Bunyan’s pilgrim; – These remind me again of a grace I know him to have received of the kind that reflects in that lowly, despicable, unattractive way, that may enable a person to be there when the roll is called.
i wish to commend Rev. Jessica Nakawombe for such a brilliant observation. This whole Rev. Dr. Magumba thing is sad and unfortrunate, not just for him and his family but also for the whole Church of Uganda. Despite being in the UK, Rev. Dr. Magumba was (and still is) surely a potential candidate for Bishop and other offices here in Uganda given his extensive training and exposure. You will all agree with me that he is one of the most well trained clergy in Busoga and the whole of Uganda. He has also mentored many at several universities here in Uganda and elsewhere. My heart goes out to him as a person I know very well and one about whom I can comment competently, a family friend and one who has officiated at several occassions in our family. I believe that you agree with me that it is not only Rev. Canon Magumba involved. If you have been in the dispora or in the UK to be exact, then you agree with me that even English and other white clergy are into this kind of thing and in this case Rev Magumba may be a sacrificial lamb. Besides, I think the Rev. only just took things a bit lightly with no malice aforethought and with a heart of brotherhood for fellow Africans. Now that he owns up to the scandal, I cant say he is not all that guilty. However, I cant help thinking that a lot of negative publicity has been given in this case with only the prosecuting side featuring and the Rev.’s position not being accorded as much opportunity of defence outside the courts of law in England. I invite you all to think with me that it is at this time that Rev. needs us most as fellow Ugandans and Africans. Before we cast our “stone”, it is important that we weigh sides and examine if justice should have been done better in this case. In fact we should also respect him for the fact that he stood boldly to the end and admitted that he could have failed within the limits of human weakness, a virtue that most of us may not have. I hope his prison term serves to do reparation for the scandal and I look forward to seein him at the end of the jail term which I definitely know will be shorter than the sentence handed down. TO THE CHURCH OF UGANDA, OUR CLERGY DESERVE BETTER. YOU KNOW THE KIND OF LIVES THEY LIVE TESTIFY THAT THERE IS STILL A LOT TO DO FOR THEM TO LIVE HAPPIER LIVES ESPECIALLY IN REGARD TO THE KIND OF SACRIFICE THEY MAKE EVERYDAY TO KEEP THE MINISTRY ON ITS FEET AND WITH MINIMAL INCENTIVE. KINDLY STAND WITH REV. CANON JOHN, I BELIEVE HE IS REPENTANT AND HAS TAKEN A LESSON FROM THIS. Rev. John, if you happen to read this……I just want you to know that what you going through is just a punctuation in your life. It is all about how high you can bounce (back) after hitting the bottom. I still look forward to seeing you Rev.
may the almighty God be with him in these trying days.I have grown up respecting rev.Dr from iganga ntinda village.
Dear Jessica, you started well but you wandered into judgment. There is a lot we do not know about John’s case. The judgment you passed on him “to chill in prison and wake up to his senses as to why he was called in ministry”, is utterly unwarranted especially when it comes from a fellow clergy like you and a former student of his. I do not condone what John did, but as Paul tells us “we know what to do but we do the opposite” (Rom.7:15), and the confession prayer brings it home – “tuleka ebitwagwanira okukola netukola ebitatugwanira kukola…” The important thing to do now is to reach out (if they are reachable) and support John’s wife and children. I wonder what they would think of you if they landed on your article. Let us be compassionate. This world is too small to stand aloof and condemn.
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