By Ismail Kwame Nkurunziza
I rarely watch TV these days but when I saw a screaming post on NTV’s MWASUZE MUTYA page about a youthful businessman who made his first billion at 23, I knew this is a story I wanted to know about.
The host Faridah Nakazibwe started by telling her guest Paul Owor, how people who are hearing his story for the first time can’t believe that he made all that money from scratch at such a young age, to which Owor responded that he had come onto the show to challenge such mindsets.
After telling Nakazibwe how he got his first and second jobs he went to narrate how his intense drive to better himself and a combination of charm and luck led him to getting an Italian client who paid him an equivalent of slightly over a billion shillings.
Excited by a sudden cash windfall, Owor went on to buy a Range Rover and splash money in bars but eventually the hunky businessman had a major rethink and started investing in things that bring in money.
Owor, 29, who is also a musician, now owns a construction company, record label and a transport business.
The soft-spoken entrepreneur with a dream of emulating Dr Sudhir Rupareila and owning a conglomerate one day says he is a family man with two children.
Towards the end of the show Nakazibwe asked him if he knew his net worth and he said it was a little over Shs10 billion.
An astounding figure in a country where the vast majority of people struggle to live a decent life, Owor recently launched his campaign to become a Member of Parliament for Busiro South constituency and will tussle with the incumbent Peter Ssematimba. He said the people of that constituency deserve better representation.
Viewers impressed by his inspiring story took to Facebook heaped blessings upon him while others complained that the astronomical amounts of money he was talking about and trips around the world were not something they can easily relate him to.
A quick look at his Facebook page shows that for the last ten days he has been on a media tour that has seen him hosted on Bukedde, Kingdom FM, NBS TV, Record TV, STV, Urban TV, among others.
He has also interacted with several top politicians in the country including MP Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, among others.
