Idah Nantaba

In 2003, following her graduation from Makerere, she worked as a tourism officer with Pearl of Africa Tours and Travel Limited. She left that job in late 2003. Beginning in 2005, she served on the board of directors of Jordan Laboratories Limited, a distributor of photographic and printing equipment. In 2010, she joined active elective politics by contesting the Kayunga District Women's Parliamentary Constituency. She won the NRM political party primary by defeating the incumbent, Florence Naiga. In 2011, she was elected during the general election.[3] In a cabinet reshuffle on 15 August 2012, she was appointed as State Minister for Lands,[5] replacing Sarah Opendi Achieng.[3] After weeks of protracted confirmation hearings, the Appointments Committee of Parliament finally confirmed her appointment on 23 October 2012.[6]

During the 2016 parliamentary election cycle, Nantaba lost during the primary elections held by the National Resistance Movement (NRM), her political party at the time.[7] She quit the party, citing rigging during the primaries,[8] as she had previously warned.[9] During the national elections held on 18 February 2016, Nantaba, who ran as an independent candidate, polled 86,057 votes against Ruth Nakacwa, who received 13,184 votes.[10] Despite having quit the ruling NRM party, she was appointed as Minister of State for ICT on 6 June 2016.[1]

On 24 March 2019, Nantaba was involved in an incident that led to an innocent person being handcuffed and shot dead by Ugandan police.[11][12] Nantaba had wrongly thought the man, Ronald Ssebulime, had been following them on his motorcycle in Kayunga District.[11][12] After a pursuit, Ssebulime was arrested, handcuffed, and shot twice in the chest by an officer.[11][12] Officials initially tried to cover up the incident, saying they had thwarted an assassination attempt.[11][12] But after civic outrage, the police released a statement holding the officer responsible.[12][13]