A succession dispute has broken out over the Tooro Kingdom in western Uganda after clan elders named TV news presenter Prince Edward Rukidi Kijanangoma as the new monarch, a decision rejected by the family of the late King Oyo, who died last month aged 34. The row, which erupted days before Oyo's burial, matters because it threatens to overshadow the funeral of a widely admired modernising king and exposes tension over how one of Uganda's restored traditional kingdoms chooses its leaders.

Oyo's sister, Princess Ruth Komuntale, said a 2022 will named his young son, whose identity has not been disclosed, as heir, and accused the clan elders of stoking "confusion and turmoil" during a period of mourning. Queen mother Best Kemigisa said royal guards had been withdrawn and soldiers deployed around the palace, calling it a "house arrest", and appealed to President Yoweri Museveni to let the family bury Oyo in peace on Saturday. The 19-member succession committee said it chose Kijanangoma, 56, Oyo's cousin and grandson of a former king, after due diligence, having previously approached a UK-based prince who declined; Tooro's monarch is selected from the royal Babiito clan rather than through a fixed line of succession, and holds cultural rather than political authority.