The 34-year-old monarch of Uganda’s Tooro Kingdom, who had reigned as King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV since he was a toddler, died on Thursday night, the authorities said, after weeks of speculation about his health.
Calvin Armstrong Rwomiire Akiiki, prime minister of the Tooro Kingdom in western Uganda, announced the death in a statement without specifying a cause. Earlier on Thursday, he wrote on social media that the king was “in critical condition” and asked people to refrain from “rumours or sharing unverified information regarding His Majesty’s condition.”
After the king’s death, he said that the line of succession was secure. The king, he said, “leaves behind a Prince as his heir, whose identity will be formally revealed at the appropriate time, in accordance with the traditions and customs of Tooro Kingdom.” Further information on his survivors wasn’t immediately available.
A few weeks ago, the prime minister dismissed “false and misleading reports” about the king’s condition, saying he was “in good health” and “in the United States undertaking official engagements and furthering his studies.”
The office of Uganda’s prime minister on Friday also confirmed the king’s death.
Uganda’s centuries-old kingdoms were outlawed by the government in 1967 as the president at the time sought to consolidate his rule. Four kingdoms — Buganda, Ankole, Bunyoro and Tooro — were reinstated in 1995, more as cultural institutions than political powers, and King Oyo’s father returned to the country.
The father soon died, though, and Oyo was crowned at 3 years old that same year. Growing up, he went to school and played video games and soccer, and his mother controlled the household spending. (Women are barred from reigning in the kingdom, putting King Oyo before his mother and older sister in the line of succession.)
King Oyo also presided over ceremonies where worshipers knelt before him, and he traveled around the country and overseas, and met with the officials and bureaucrats of the roughly million people of his kingdom.
“My life is very different from most 12-year-olds,” he told The New York Times in 2004. Surrounded by bodyguards and attendants, presented with royal treasures and unable to simply socialize with other children outside school, he admitted then that at times he felt trapped.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder, ‘Why am I a king?’”