The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Kampala police are holding a woman accused of stealing offertories from various churches. The suspect is 25-year-old Judith Nanangwa a resident of Seeta in Mukono district.
According to police, the suspect was picked up at Watoto church Ntinda-Butukirwa during the first service on Sunday when she received the offertory bag containing Shillings 640,000 and swapped it with another bag with less money.
The suspect is locked up at Ntinda police station on tentative charges of theft pending transfer to Kira road police station. Police Spokesperson, Fred Enanga says that following her arrest Nanangwa confessed that she had been stealing offertories from various churches.
Enanga explained that the suspect told detectives that she observed the offertory bags and went and manufactured her own that looked similar to those in the church that she would swap. He also says that the suspect confessed that she has been stealing offertories in church out of frustration because her husband abandoned her together with her children.
Enanga asked church leaders to often change the methods of collecting offertories to avoid such problems. Fred Wada, the head of security at Watoto church says it was out of vigilance that the suspect was nabbed. He says that one of the church members alerted a colleague who passed information to management leading to the arrest of the suspect red-handed.
“It has been found out that the money has been disappearing from church mysteriously until today when the suspect has been arrested,” Wada told police. Nanangwa isn’t the first person to steal church offertories. On August 12th, 2019, thugs broke into St. Augustine Chapel, Makerere University and made off with unspecified sum of money, laptop, extension cables offertory boxes of Mother Mary and Radio Maria.
Fr. Josephat Ddungu, the Chaplain St. Augustine Chapel, Makerere University told URN then that they were able to able to identify the thugs on CCTV footage. “So we’re able to see him on CCTV footage and that is the video clip that we’re circulating right now because he looks familiar from the way he went around he seems to have knowledge of where we keep our stuff,” said Father Ddundgu.
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