Uganda President Yoweri Museveni. /FILE
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has said he's just learnt that former Lugari MP Cyrus Jirongo had died, more than eight months after the former minister perished in a road crash on December 13, 2025.
Jirongo's name has made headlines in recent days after Museveni revealed that the former Kenyan legislator informed him in 2019 that the Ugandan government was purchasing fuel from Kenya through middlemen at inflated markups, resulting in millions of shillings in losses.
"It was a Kenyan Senator called Jirongo who told me this around 2019. I immediately tasked the then Minister Irene Muloni to sort out that mess," Museveni said while speaking at Mpigi District during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Kampala Storage Terminal on February 17.
Jirongo served as Lugari MP from 1997 to 2002 and again from 2007 to 2013.
Five days after revealing that Jirongo was the Kenyan lawmaker who helped Uganda address losses linked to inflated fuel prices, Museveni said he had only then learnt that the former MP had died.
"I have just learnt that Senator Cyrus Jirongo passed away last December in a motor accident. I was not aware that he had died. This is very sad," Museveni said in a statement on X.
He described Jirongo as a good and patriotic leader who served Kenya with dedication.
"We shall miss him. My condolences go to his family, relatives, friends and the people of Kenya. May his soul rest in peace," Museveni said.
Jirongo died in the early hours of Saturday, December 13, 2025, at around 3am when his car was involved in a road accident along the Nairobi-Nakuru Highway.
The 64-year-old died after his car reportedly collided head-on with an oncoming passenger bus, according to a police report.
Jirongo was a prominent politician whose career spanned decades, with his influence extending across politics, business and public life.
He first entered elective politics by winning the Lugari Constituency parliamentary seat in the 1997 elections, at a time when Kenya was adjusting to multiparty politics.
An alumnus of Mang'u High School, Jirongo gained national attention in the early 1990s when he and his colleagues were regarded as dynamic, forceful and closely allied to President Daniel arap Moi's inner circle.
At the time, he spearheaded Youth for KANU '92 (YK '92), a powerful lobby group that mobilised support for Moi ahead of the critical 1992 multiparty elections, which Moi won against a divided opposition.
During Moi's final year in power in 2002, he appointed Jirongo Minister for Rural Development, a position he held until the General Election later that year, which ended KANU's decades-long grip on power.
