Caesar Obong Ng'bong ocen
Prev: General O: A Mole Amidst God’s Men
They came to Okello’s church, not to pray, but to fish for their next victims. Sat amongst the congregation, blending with the faithful, appearing ordinary, yet their eyes were hunting for their next victim. Church had turned into a hunting ground for these lost sheep’s.
“Open your Bibles to the book of Numbers, chapter thirteen, verse two,” Okello said, his smile widening. He let it linger—vivid and familiar—the kind of smile we had grown used to. It disarmed suspicion, the kind that made you forget you were being studied while you listened.
Truth be told, most of us did not come to this church because we loved Okello. We came because the place absorbed our burdens. It helped us kill our stress. And after the service, there was food—delicious chicken nuggets, chips, and other delicacies that, in my home, appeared only on Christmas Day, or when there was a big ceremonial celebration in a nearby neighbourhood. Don’t laugh at me—I’m telling the truth, as a single man. This was why we came back, week after week.
The sermons were calm. The prayers measured. Nothing felt urgent, and that was the church’s greatest strength. People came broken, tired, distracted. They left lighter, laughing, fed.
No one noticed how carefully Okello chose his verses. No one asked why he lingered on certain words. No one thought twice about why Numbers thirteen mattered. After all, it was just scripture. And scripture, we believed, was harmless.
Then came the intercessions, where Okello always did his best. On hot days, the ushers moved quietly through the rows, handing out bottled water and sodas. I preferred sitting where I could receive whatever came my way—me and my friend, Mary Mwaibako. I must admit, there were moments when I almost wanted to tell her that something within a brother’s heart was stirring…
Don’t get me wrong. I know what you people are already thinking of me. Don’t get me wrong—Mary and I were only two very good friends in the Lord’s church. She always sat next to me, even when we went to enjoy Okello’s holy chicken and chips. Gosh, it was great being a child of God.
Even the Numbers thirteen verse, I realized, sometimes felt more like instruction than story. Something in the way Okello read it made me watch. Made me think. Made me wonder if scripture could ever be… more than words.
In Okello’s church, the eyes were everywhere. I think that is why I kept my feelings to myself. His preaching sometimes felt like pure espionage, even in the way he selected his scripture. To say even the smallest gesture—or the quietest pause—could carry meaning would not be an exaggeration.
Two weeks passed, and these two goons began to plot their next victims: two church girls who were in the choir. This was also the end of their craft, because they had landed on the wrong grounds. Their eyes would betray them to a master spy—a well-trained and lethal girl. Despite looking below twenty-two years of age, she had endured nine years of hardship and combat training, and had no problem when it came to making their victims talk.
The girls accepted the request casually because they knew that private eyes were watching them. That evening, an alert was sounded of a place they would meet—at Kumbuzi along Gayaza Road. I was there when they met the girls. These girls came on a motorbike—the bigger, most expensive one that made the boys’ cars look cheap and unstylish. They refused to eat or drink anything and preferred to ride their bike to the boys’ destination while the boys drove. Midway, the boys were intercepted.
After the vehicle was intercepted and searched, the investigator found chloroform and other tools and equipment used to carry out surgical procedures. The forensic team were called in and carried out test on these equipments. Letter on I heard the forensic team report that the DNA samples found on the equipment matched a person from either the northern or western part of Tanzania. My heart wept—Mary Mwaibako was a friend of mine and she had gone missing for weeks now, I feared she must have been a victim too, worse more she could have been killed in cold blood, her body lying somewhere in the bushes. Thing about this painful act made me feel the pain of loosing at…
Weeks passed in confinement. The hell that was described in the Bible was actually on earth. Rumors soon reached Dr. Tumbo, of Okello the Night Walker, and how he had once captured a mystical necromancer feared across Africa. Dr. Tumbo wished he had guided the two boys not to touch Okello’s church, for they were the anointed ones.
Days later, the necromancer was captured, tortured beyond recognition, and brought into the church when Okello was interceding. It was aired on most media stations. When he revealed that he had commanded a certain politician and businessman by the name of Mr. Tumbo to bring him the items, the network of greed and occult craft was laid bare.
Mary Mwaibako had disappeared weeks ago; her whereabouts were unknown. Some said the born-again lady might have been deported to her country of origin, but DNA confirmed something darker.
The room where Mary’s hands were bound was dark and humid. A fat, hairy man stepped inside, moving toward her. She realized, just in time, that her bonds were loose. Holding her breath, she waited. As the massive man leaned closer, Mary summoned every ounce of strength she had, kicked with all her power, and broke free. She ran into the wilderness, her legs carrying her as fast as they could through the night.
Gravely injured but alive, she stumbled into Kotido toward the Kenyan border, where she was treated by a good Samaritan in a private clinic. News reached Okello, who summoned a military chopper at once to pick her up, for she was a living proof. A few days later, Mary surfaced. Her return made my heart weep with joy; uncontrollable tears streamed from my eyes. Her medical bills were taken care of by Okello’s church.
Mary would later tell the story of how these men tried to remove her private parts, how they used herbs and sedatives to infuse their victims, and how they would sing songs while summoning spirits to incarnate a body. She explained that when a body was fully incarnated under moonlight, only then would these men begin work on their victims. She showed marks on her body where these rituals had left their trace. The girl she was tied with did not survive.
While Mr. Tumbo’s men, Paul and William, wasted their youthful lives in jail, Tumbo himself, knowing that government operatives might come for him at any moment, resorted to narcotics that made his mind swell with the troubles of the day. Within two months, his big fat belly had collapsed beyond recognition. He stayed in a mental hospital under the cover of pretence. Every morning, he slept naked in the courtyard, staring at the sun with his teeth. Many thought sanity had finally seized him. What no one knew was that Tumbo had paid doctors to let him stay in the hospital instead of serving his sentence for manslaughter—a clever ruse that allowed him to evade justice… for a time.
In the end, when Okello had grown tired of Tumbo’s games, he acted. Accompanied by Mary, he went to the mental hospital. Mary was dressed like one of the hospital workers, calm and unassuming. As Tumbo went through his usual morning routine, she appeared from nowhere—a face he would never forget. It was the girl who had kicked him hard enough in the groin and vanished at night without a trace. Today, she was going to be his doctor.
Tumbo froze. Trembling from head to toe, sweat ran down his chest and soaked his midsection. A swarm of flies began to circle him, drawn by the stench of fear and decay. Every nerve in his body screamed. His forty days of arrogance and impunity were finally over.
He tried to speak, but no words came. His mind raced, knowing that every scheme, every bribe, every shadowed deal had led him to this moment. Behind him, Mary moved silently, composed, resolute—the same girl who had once been powerless but now held the power of justice.
By the directives of General O, signed and stamped by the president himself, Tumbo was moved from the mental hospital to maximum-security prison. Guards surrounded him, their eyes cold, unyielding. There was no mercy, no delay. The playboy, the schemer, the tormentor—he had met the reckoning.
Justice had been served.
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Caesar Obong Ng'bong Ocen is a Ugandan writer whose work traverses narrative fiction, cultural memory, and moral inquiry. Drawing on African cosmologies, and reflective storytelling, his writing engages with issues of power, identity, faith, and the human condition within post‑conflict societies. His series blends political realism with interior psychological struggle, articulating the tensions between duty and conscience, tradition and modernity, exile, redemption. Obong Ng'bong's work bridges literary and social worlds: it interrogates African historical and political realities while exploring philosophical and ethical questions that resonate across disciplines. His narratives are grounded in cultural authenticity and moral depth, making them relevant to both literary and humanistic inquiry. He also mentors emerging writers and contributes to dialogue on African storytelling traditions and their place in contemporary literature.
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