as the photo caption claimed. Onyango-Obbo and the other editors were acquitted on 6 March 2001. In October 2002, again Onyango-Obbo and three other colleagues were arrested and charged with publication of a story that "aided the enemies of Uganda", after a report that alleged that a military helicopter might have been shot down in northern Uganda by the obnoxious rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army. The government also closed down The Monitor for 10 days. They were acquitted of the charges a year later. In all, Onyango-Obbo appeared in court over 120 times between 1997 and mid-2003; more than the combined number of times Ugandan journalists had been in court since the country's independence in October 1962. Leaving Uganda With that, Onyango-Obbo took up an offer from Nation Media Group, which had taken a majority stake in The Monitor in March 2000, to move to Nairobi, Kenya, and initiate the group's media convergence operations. In his view, his continued presence had become counter-productive, because of the hostility of the government towards him and the extent to which he had become a controversial figure, and was overshadowing the newspaper's long-term prospects and undermining the ability of other journalists at the paper to emerge. In 2014, Onyango-Obbo left Nation Media Group to run Mail and Guardian Africa, a digital news platform owned by South Africa's Mail & Guardian, as its Africa Editor. He left the Nairobi-based unit two years later, launching his own digital media unit which currently runs Africa Explainer, AfricaPedia, and Rogue Chiefs. Publications Ear to the Ground (1996): Uganda's Poorly Kept Secrets: (1998) – A Collection of short stories Mixed and Brewed in Uganda: (2008) – A Short tour of the soul of a nation and its people It Never Happened: (2009) – A story on the day before Uganda military dictator Idi Amin was ousted in 1979, the day he fell, and the day after. References External links Onyango-Obbo article archive Mwenda, Obbo: Losing Their Edge? The Late Bernard Mary Ayepa Onyango (1930–2013) Was Charles Onyango-Obbo's Father-in-Law 1958 births Living people Ugandan journalists Ugandan columnists Luo people Makerere University alumni Nieman Fellows The American University in Cairo alumni Nation Media Group Ugandan expatriates in Kenya People educated at St. Leo's College, Kyegobe