In accepting his reappointment to the helm of the National Social Security Fund last week after a protracted selection process, Richard Byarugaba may be walking a tightrope in what he prefers to describe as “the call of duty.”

At 53, he will be trying to rise above the politics of a supervisor who showed a lack of confidence in him.

Mr Byarugaba’s immediate challenge will be defining his relationship with the finance minister and the NSSF board, who both chose to subject him to competition when they could have simply given him another term.

“It will call for a lot of skill on his part because the minister had the powers to simply re-appoint him but chose to throw him to the wolves. Also, the fact that the board, which had worked with him for three years, gave him the lowest score in the interviews means he will be dealing with veiled animosity,” a senior figure in the Finance Ministry said.

Mr Byarugaba’s appointment was announced on October 29 by Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka, two months after President Yoweri Museveni asked her to offer him the job given his track record at the Fund.

The president argued that failing to return Mr Byarugaba and the deputy chief executive Geraldine Ssali, during whose tenure the Fund grew exponentially, would be tantamount to penalising performance.

The incumbents scored the lowest marks in separate interviews conducted by the executive selection division of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the NSSF board.

In the appointment letters, Mr Byarugaba was tasked to look after members’ savings and Ms Ssali will be responsible for corporate governance.

Earlier, Ms Kiwanuka had hired PwC to source candidates. There were also reports, denied by the government but confirmed by individuals in the ministry, that, dismayed by the results, the finance minister tried to recruit from outside Uganda.

During their three-year tenure, the duo grew the Fund and distanced it from the procurement scandals that had bedevilled past administrations. But the period was also characterised by internal bickering between the chief executive and the corporation secretary.

Mr Byarugaba’s efforts to rid the fund of a bloated work force and redundant structures also generated acrimony, resulting in frequent reports to the Inspector General of Government.

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This, according to those in the know, is likely to continue because the reports were about Mr Byarugaba’s attempts to effect culture change in an institution that had little sense of responsibility for members’ savings.

According to an insider, this state of affairs drove Ms Kiwanuka to open the vacancies to competition, an effort that proved futile after it failed to return a wide field of suitable candidates. To complicate matters further, the incumbents emerged as a safer bet than their competitors who scored higher in the interviews.

In endorsing Mr Byarugaba, President Museveni was reportedly considering the fact that the candidates who scored highest in the interviews lacked a finance background, and none of them had been in charge of an institution comparable to the NSSF.

Furthermore, the pensions sector is on the verge of liberalisation and President Museveni felt that an individual with solid credentials was needed to steer the Fund through a liberalised market.

President Museveni’s directive to re-appoint Mr Byarugaba seemingly helped the finance minister out of a quagmire.

However, it raises the question of how the two will relate from now on.

“As workers, we have no problem with Mr Byarugaba because better the devil you know. But the minister and the board must be accountable for spending so much money on a futile recruitment process. Why did they disturb people that were already performing well only to end up coming back to them?” asked Nelson Owere, chairman general of the National Organisation of Trade Unions that delegates three representatives to the NSSF board.

Sources also report that Mr Byarugaba had run-ins with the board over the strategy for reviving the Fund’s stalled real estate projects.

The Fund has millions of dollars buried in real estate projects that are either the subject of litigation or have stalled due to suspected fraud in procurement.

The board wanted the NSSF to use part of its cash pile in excess of Ush4 trillion ($1.5 billion) to finance real estate development.

Speaking to The EastAfrican, Mr Byarugaba said he was conscious of the complexities facing his new term but felt he had no choice but to accept the offer.

“It is true, I was already in employment when this call came. But in the circumstances, I could not turn down this job, it was a call to national service,” he said.

Mr Byarugaba, who sees his primary responsibility as achieving a good return on members’ savings, says the double-digit interest rates paid over the past couple of years would be impossible to achieve if NSSF’s money were buried in real estate.

“To get Temangalo, Lubowa, Nsimbe and Pension Towers off the ground would consume 90 per cent of the present value of the fund. What I propose is a special purpose vehicle that would operate at a safe distance from the Fund to run the real estate business. They would borrow commercially and operate independently, but we can only guarantee the loan,” he said.

Mr Byarugaba said the challenges are not insurmountable. “I have worked there before and I can handle the human issues. Besides, the impending liberalisation of the sector means I will be working in an environment where there will be more latitude to make the decisions critical to the fund’s growth.”

Dismissing fears of a possible clash with his deputy in managing the fund, Mr Byarugaba said the allocation of duties is neither new nor unique to NSSF, and he does not anticipate any problems working with Ms Ssali.