Of Pastor Yiga & Nabbi Omukazi’s romance: Revisiting the fear and faith in-between – Sqoop

 

By Patrick Ssentongo

“Again, God?”

Those were the words that came to Maggie Kayima’s mind when her doctor went through her latest medical results following a recent appointment in the United States.

In a Facebook post shared after the appointment, Kayima, popularly known as Nabbi Omukazi, revealed that she had once again tested negative for HIV.

For her, however, the result was not simply another medical report. It took her back to one of the most difficult and puzzling chapters of her life, her relationship with the late Pastor Augustine Yiga Abizaayo.

Nabbi Omukazi is a musician who rose to prominence through Revival Ministries and its music scene. She was part of Yiga’s Revival Band, where what began as a professional and spiritual relationship eventually developed into a romance that would last roughly eight years.

For years, the relationship between Nabbi and Yiga was one of Uganda’s most talked-about intersections of entertainment, church, controversy and private life.

It was a relationship that moved through several chapters, from music and friendship to romance, from public affection to bitter fallout, and eventually to death and remembrance.

Now, years after Yiga’s death, Nabbi has returned to one of the most difficult chapters of that story, not necessarily to reopen an old fight, but to make sense of what she describes as one of the strangest journeys of her life.

According to Nabbi, one of the biggest turning points came when Yiga became seriously ill while in South Africa.

She says it was during that period that he disclosed to her that he was living with HIV and that his CD4 count had fallen dangerously low.

For Nabbi, the revelation came with an immediate fear. After years together, she assumed that she too must have contracted the virus.

They went to Mengo Hospital and tested.

Yiga was positive.

Nabbi was negative.

Still unconvinced, she says they went to the Joint Clinical Research Centre for another test.

The result remained the same.

Yiga was positive. Nabbi was negative.

She says Yiga struggled to understand the results and eventually told her that he believed she was blessed and protected.

The statement stayed with her.

So did another possibility.

Nabbi says she wondered whether, beneath his disbelief, there was also a fear that she would leave him now that she knew his status while hers remained negative.

She says Yiga asked her not to leave.

And she stayed.

That decision is central to the story she tells today.

Rather than portraying herself simply as someone who escaped a feared illness, Nabbi describes herself as a woman who remained beside someone she loved after learning something that could have fundamentally changed their relationship.

A relationship born in music

Nabbi and Yiga’s story was closely intertwined with the rise of Revival Ministries and its music scene.

Yiga had built Revival Band into one of the more recognisable church-linked music outfits of its time, and the group became a launching pad for several performers, including Nabbi Omukazi.

Yiga himself had long spoken publicly about his passion for music before and alongside his pastoral work.

Over time, what began as a professional and spiritual association developed into a relationship that Nabbi later confirmed had lasted roughly eight years.

In 2020, following Yiga’s death, she publicly described him as a man with whom she had shared a deep connection through music and friendship.

She recalled that they played instruments, sang and composed together, and said she had never found another person with whom she shared the same connection.

But their relationship was far from straightforward.

There were periods of separation, public accusations and bitter exchanges.

By 2017, their relationship had deteriorated so badly that Nabbi publicly warned Yiga against continuing to make her a subject of discussion on his television programmes.

The relationship that had once been largely private had by then become public entertainment.

The breakup was never simply about HIV

There have been different accounts over the years about why Nabbi and Yiga eventually separated.

In 2020, some reports quoted Nabbi as saying Yiga’s HIV status influenced the end of their relationship.

But in a later interview published in 2024, Nabbi offered a different emphasis, saying the relationship ultimately broke down because of Yiga’s jealousy, possessiveness and insecurity rather than his HIV status.

She described their relationship as intimate but said his controlling behaviour eventually became unbearable.

That contradiction is important because it reveals just how complicated their relationship was.

It was not simply a story of a woman discovering a partner’s HIV status and walking away.

There was love.

There was music.

There was friendship.

There were attempts to rebuild the relationship.

And there was eventually conflict.

In 2020, Nabbi even said that shortly before Yiga’s death, they had spoken about working together again on some of their shared projects, including music and television.

From romance to public war

The relationship later became one of the most dramatic personal disputes surrounding Yiga.

After Nabbi left Revival, the two publicly traded accusations and criticisms.

Yiga’s television programming became part of the dispute, while Nabbi accused him of using his platforms to target her.

In 2017, she publicly challenged him to stop discussing her.

Yet even amid the hostility, Nabbi continued to speak about the good memories.

When Yiga died in October 2020, she described him as someone she had loved deeply and later announced plans for a concert celebrating his life, particularly because of his love for music.

That contradiction, loving someone, fighting with them, leaving them and still mourning them, perhaps explains why their story has remained so difficult to categorise.

The prison chapter

Nabbi’s latest post adds another layer to the story.

She recalls her time in Kigo Prison, where she says harsh conditions included being awakened around 4am and taken into the cold.

During one period, she developed severe nosebleeds that lasted for three days.

Rumours began circulating among fellow inmates that her condition could be connected to HIV.

She says a prison doctor eventually checked her medical records.

Again, the result was negative.

Years later, she says, she tested again.

And again.

Negative.

The latest test, taken after her doctor ordered extensive blood work in the United States, became the fifth negative HIV test she says she has received over the years.

Where science ends, faith begins for Nabbi

There is an important distinction in Nabbi’s interpretation of her story.

She acknowledges that HIV science explains transmission and that being in a relationship with an HIV-positive partner does not mean transmission is inevitable.

Her experience, therefore, is not evidence that HIV transmission is impossible, nor does it contradict medical science.

But for Nabbi, the repeated negative results have become part of a much larger spiritual narrative.

She sees them as evidence of divine protection.

That is why, years after Yiga’s death, she finds herself returning to the words he spoke when he first looked at her test results.

He had called her blessed and protected.

Now, she says, those words mean something different.

Yiga eventually died in 2020 after health complications.

His death closed one of the most controversial chapters in Nabbi’s public life, but it did not erase the memories of the years they spent together.

If anything, time appears to have softened some of the edges.

The woman who once fought publicly with him now remembers the musician, the friend, the lover and the man who once told her that he believed she was protected.

Her latest post is therefore less about Pastor Yiga than it first appears.

It is about what remains after a complicated relationship ends.

It is about surviving public controversy, illness scares, imprisonment, loss and rumours.

And it is about the human need to find meaning in experiences that do not always come with neat explanations.

For years, Nabbi Omukazi and Pastor Yiga were a Ugandan celebrity mystery. Were they lovers, partners, church colleagues, enemies, friends, or all of these at different points?

The answer, perhaps, is that they were all of them.

Nabbi’s latest reflection suggests she no longer feels compelled to reduce their story to one label.

She remembers the love.

She remembers the fear.

She remembers the diagnosis.

She remembers the arguments.

She remembers staying.

And she remembers losing him.

But above everything else, she says, she remembers surviving.

For Nabbi, the latest negative result is not simply a medical conclusion. It is another chapter in a story she believes only God fully understands.

And after nearly two decades of a relationship that has been dissected by Uganda’s public, perhaps that is the one part of the story she has chosen to keep for herself.