and yards of cloth", keeping him from "the really important work of inspecting the country and winning the confidence of the natives". The British government post was moved from Wadelai to Fatiko in 1906 and then Koba in 1907. At the same time the Belgian post closed as part of a general withdrawal from Lado. From then until the outbreak of the First World War, Wadelai was a base for poaching of elephants for the ivory trade. In 1910 the Smithsonian–Roosevelt African Expedition was allowed to hunt white rhinoceros. Winston Churchill passing through in 1907 and described Wadelai as "newly abandoned to ruin". Theodore Roosevelt described the native settlement in 1910: "thatched huts surrounded by a fence .. small fields of mealies and beans, cultivated by the women, and a few cattle and goats; ... big wicker-work fish-traps". Sleeping sickness was endemic. There remained a weather station at Wadelai; the telegraph office was closed in May 1918. According to the 1929 Encyclopaedia Britannica, steamboats between Butiaba and Nimule were still calling at the Wadelai "native village". Archaeological surveys were made of the remains of "Fort Emin Pasha" in 1935 by A. J. Rusk and in 1963 by Merrick Posnansky and the Brathay Exploration Group. In 1972 it was scheduled as a historical cultural site. A small hotel opened there in 2013, funded by the German government in memory of Emin's German origins. A journalist visiting the British fort site in 2008 found it deserted and overgrown. Modern sub-county Wadelai is a sub-county of Jonam County (formerly in Nebbi District but now in Pakwach District). There is a Magistrate Grade II Court in Wadelai. The sub-county has a total area of . It is divided into the parishes of Mutir, Pakwinyo, Pumit, Ongwelle, and Ojigo, each in turn divided into villages. The parishes of Ragem Upper and Lower were in Wadelai sub-county at the time of the 2014 census but subsequently erected into a new sub-county named Ragem. The modern settlement of Wadelai is several kilometres from the west bank of the Nile at , where the road from Ajai Wildlife Reserve to Pakwach crosses the Ora River. The 2016 chairperson election was won by independent Richard Okan with 1,799 votes. In the 2021 Ugandan Presidential election, the Electoral Commission of Uganda recorded that 4,670 (62%) of 7,488 of voters registered in the sub-county cast ballots, 3,424 (73%) of them for