The Diagnosis 

Some of us feel that beside the military, another big problem lies with the administrative system that gives one man boundless power. Most Ugandans are oblivious of the fact that the presidential system has been the biggest source of the problems for this country. It’s that presidential system that has corrupted whoever lands into the presidency. It’s that system that makes one man become the commander in chief of the armed forces, the chief executive, the appointing authority, the director of all policies in the land, the director of finance, etc, etal.

Can’t we change this system?

Yes, we can. Uganda has held hotly contested elections that have spiraled into political uncertainty, with the one of 1980 culminating into a five-year civil, bush war. Did we learn any lessons? The 1961 election that resulted into victory for DP’S Benedicto Kiwanuka and the 1962 elections that brought Apollo Milton Obote as Prime Minister and Frederick Muteesa as President ended without any chaos because those respective elections were held under a Parliamentary system.

The only elections that were held under the presidential system and ended peacefully, uncontested without a court petition was the 1996 one where President Museveni defeated Ssenkaggale Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere. All the other elections of 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021 have all ended in court. At one time, the late Professor G.W. Kanyeihmba was one of the judges that almost nullified one of President Museveni’s victories. The Supreme Court had to resort to the difficult decision of stating thus; “Although elections were rigged, the rigging was not substantial enough to justify the nullification of the elections’’. In the end, President Museveni has needed the extra advantage of the army to sustain his political victories.

Where would he be without the army?

And moving forward, I think that we need a new political system that is NOT anchored around the military by withdrawing most of the power from the office of the president. We need to do this by getting rid of the presidential system that gives the sitting president a lot of power.

As stated earlier, the Britons left Uganda with the parliamentary system, well knowing that it was the best system that could guarantee the political future of the young democracy. Although this system crumbled because of the big egos of two personalities of Prime Minister Apollo Milton Obote and President Sir Frederick Muteesa, it was safe enough to guarantee long term stability.

I need to stress here that A.M Obote knew that he couldn’t have survive under the parliamentary system and hastily adopted the presidential system using the 1967 constitution. Under the presidential system, Obote became the alpha and omega because he now had unwavering powers over everything.

He used the army and the security agencies to detain, persecute his opponents and dominate the political terrain. By 1969 Uganda was under one party state, coz he had announced UPC as the only party in the country. It’s worth noting that he wouldn’t have gone far with his schemes, if the country had remained under the parliamentary system. Why? Because with parliamentary system, the executive derives its powers from the legislature.

One may argue that how come he managed to wreak havoc under the parliamentary system! This was because he first neutralized the parliament by arresting all the dissenting MPs and reverting to the presidential system by adopting the pigeon hole constitution. Once he became president, the whole country dropped to his knees.

The only political challenge he had was from the army. And indeed it was his army commander Gen Idi Amin who wasted no time in staging a coup d’etat in 1971.Once Obote was gone, Uganda fell in the ferocious hands of a direct military dictatorship, where there was no parliament, no elections and Gen Amin gleedfully ruled by decree.

When Gen Amin was invaded and overthrown by the Tanzanians in 1979, there was little time to correct the political mistakes of the past. Just a few Ugandans gathered in Moshi and selected Professor Yusuf Lule as president of a post Amin-Uganda. The same click dismissed president Lule and made Godfrey Binaisa president shortly after. Each of those presidents ruled the country under the 1967 constitution, which empowered them beyond imagination prompting the late Lukongwa Binaisa to proclaim that the presidential seat was “very sweet’’ – ‘entebe ewoma’

The Constitutional Contradictions 

When elections were held again in 1980, they used a parliamentary system, where a party with most seats took power and then reverted to the presidential system when Obote took over as president. Casually, speaking, I think this was either a mistake or a contradiction because, you cannot use a parliamentary system to get a president. I beg to be corrected by students of constitutional law about this matter though.

Under a parliamentary system, the party with most MPs forms the government led by a Prime Minister. A case in point is the British system which always has a Prime Minister at the helm of government. I tend to think that the Obote group used their military power to impose a high breed system on the country because he knew that he was not going to win as an individual contender – aware of the guilt that came with the 1966 crisis.

So he shrewdly used the parliamentary system to bring back the presidential system. Once he took office, a section Obote`s opponents waged a civil war that took the lives of millions of Ugandans. By the time President Museveni won that 1981-85 civil war, Uganda was bleeding, left, right and center.

Gen Museveni has since been in power for the last 40 years, wielding all the powers that have made him a dictator of sorts. Lord Acton once said that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’’ I don’t think there is a single Ugandan who can argue with that saying coined by Lord Acton. One of the most unfortunate developments in this whole scenario is the fact that the Ugandan president has got powers to appoint the person who manages the elections!

You don’t need rocket science to deduce that someone at the helm of the electoral commission, Simon Byabakama cannot preside over an election that can remove his boss, the president, who gave him the job in the first place. This is like appointing a monkey to preside over a referendum on whether to cut down the forest or preserve it!. As a result of this alone, you end-up with no democracy at all because the incumbent president keeps himself in power at his own will with unfettered access. Under this arrangement, the incumbent president can use the electoral commission and the army to rule until he drops dead!. Therefore, the elections become a ritual for legitimizing an illegitimate government.

Why Get Rid Of The Presidential System? 

Another bad element in the presidential system is that the winner of an election takes all the power and shares it with his peers. This leaves out a lot of grumbling from the defeated group. A good case in point is the case in Kenya where President William Ruto narrowly beat Railla Oginga Odinga to the presidency.Kenya has not enjoyed peace since then because of the unrest from the defeated group that organize protest after protest.

This unrest would never have happened if Kenya was under a parliamentary system that envisages proportionate representation between the contending parties because there is a significant power sharing model that breeds harmony after elections. This presidential system where one individual needs to do the country-wide vote hunting on his own to gain the right to run this country must be scrapped because that person develops the selfish syndrome of running government alone.

Why? Uganda has got 141 distrcits and over 721 villages. Under Ugandan electoral laws, a presidential aspirant needs to hunt for signatures in all these 141 districts to get endorsed as a nominated presidential candidate. Besides the collection of signatures, the aspirant needs to campaign in all the districts!. Once that wo/man wins, it’s highly inevitable that they will feel entitled to rule with impunity. That’s where the dictatorship tendency begins from.

The Way Forward

Moving forward, we need to change this presidential system in Uganda by a swift adoption of the parliamentary system which clips the overriding powers of the person in the highest office. One, under the parliamentary system, there are minimal chances of rigging because there are no presidential candidates – as the party with most MPs forms government. Two, under this parliamentary system there is no winner-takes-it-all because power is shared between the contending political parties in the legislature. Henceforth, the party with the majority shares with the minority – like it is done in South Africa.

This leads to harmonious power sharing and gets rid of the winner take-it-all that takes place in the presidential system. Last and most important of all, the parliamentary system is not prone to military coups like the presidential system.

The author, Fred Daka Kamwada is critical thinker and policy analyst. [email protected] 

Although the elections were conducted manually on a head-count basis, where the voters had to line-up behind their preferred candidates, some shrewd contestants found a way to rig their way to victory. The most notorious method used to rig was through the importation of voters from other constituencies, the use of underage voters and out right dishing out of money to the voters.

In the end the exercise ended with unwarranted injuries and death of many Ugandans culminating into hundreds of petitions at the table of Prof Tanga Odoi’s s NRM tribunal. At the time of penning this article, some members of the ruling party had vowed to run as independents in the forthcoming 2026 elections.

This scenario, as dramatic as it turned out, prompted questions as to whether it is, or was worth it to undergo a process as tedious as it looks! From a strategic point of view, some of us believe that its completely unnecessary for someone to seek for a party flag by contesting in a party primary. Why is it so? Because it turns out that the party flag comes at a huge cost.

We witnessed that in some hotly contested constituencies, the contestants spent billions to emerge victorious. For instance, in some hotly contested areas like Rakai, one of the contestants, Hon Kinyamatama unleashed a lot of practical financial power that overwhelmed retired Maj Gen Elly Kayanja to resort to lamentations.

Gen Elly Kayanja questioned where the young legislator got the money to overwhelm the whole of Rakai – with reports that over 20 drones kept ferrying Kinyamatama supporters from one polling station to another. Kayanja ended up throwing tantrums, where he even displayed the leg injuries he suffered from the NRA bush war 40 years go.

But it’s practically obvious that his lamentations were misplaced because the NRA primaries were not necessarily conclusive to put anyone in Parliament. They were equivalent to a stag party that takes place before the ultimate wedding. Party primaries are like the semifinals of a two legged final. Losing the first leg doesn’t necessarily tantamount to the loss of the whole war, but rather a loss of the battle.

This means that even a defeated candidate can redeem themselves in the final election. This calls for a logical question; why waste time and resources in the party primaries very well knowing that they cannot send a given candidate to parliament? A strategic person with a refined mind would be right to skip them and prepare for the final elections. Why?

The Exorbitant Costs

Because first, they are very expensive for nothing, given the fact that they have no resultant effect of putting the contestant in the desired office. There are reports that some naive Ugandans pay millions to get the flags for NRM and NUP parties. One member of parliament called Hon Nsubuga revealed that at NUP, the aspiring candidates pay not less than one hundred million shillings to win the flag. In other words, the flag goes to the highest bidder. Yet a logical person should or would simply use that dime to run the campaigns.

Voter Fatigue

Secondly, the exorbitant costs aside, the party primaries put the voters in an awkward position because they have to maintain that momentum up to the real final election. These party primaries took place in late July, and yet the final elections will take place in February next year.

This means that the contestant, especially the winner of the primary has got to maintain his and or her bid for more than 150 days, interfacing with his voters because he needs them to vote for him/her again in February. There is a good chance the voters can get frustrated with someone if they don’t meet their demands during this period. There is a good chance they can suffer from voting fatigue.

Having been bruised from the primaries, they get the feeling that they have done the needful to vote for you and therefore, don’t feel obliged enough to enthusiastically vote for you again in the final, yet very crucial election. It becomes a very delicate ball game, which you can avoid if don’t run at all and wait for the finals.

 Complacency

Thirdly, once someone contests in the party primaries, they blow away the element of surprise that would have worked in their favour in case they went in that one final national election. In other words, they (voters) can tend to get used to the process, and can get drunk with victory and relax, hence exposing the whole mission to the enemy.

This complacency can be a big incentive for the opponent who can capitalize on that to bounce back and win the ultimate election. You find that while the winner of the primary is in jubilation, the loser if strategizing, trying to correct the mistakes and therefore plans how to achieve victory at all costs.

This partly explains why most losers of the party primaries bounce back to victory when they run as independents. A case in point is the experience of the current Ugandan Vice Jessica Alupo who lost the NRM party in her constituency, only to bounce back victoriously as an independent.

No Legal Imperative

The fourth point, which should be considered fundamental is the fact that these party primaries are not legally binding. That is to say, that there is no law in our constitution that compels anyone to run in the primaries. This concept is only catered for in the party constitution and not the national constitution. This means that you break no law when you opt to contest as an independent candidate. Therefore, from the legal point of view, contesting in a party primary while seeking for the party flag tantamount to double jeopardy.

The Way Forward

From strategic point of view, one needs to use this period between the party primaries to announce their political wishes by printing posters, appearing on radios and tv shows and interfacing mildly with the voters. In fact, it’s better to spend more time with the voting agents than the voters themselves, to allow one get in the fray with the element of surprise at their disposal.

What happens today?

Well, unfortunately today the answer cannot be the same because Prof Mutebile is now dead and has not been replaced at his docket as the governor of Bank of Uganda. And Keith Muhakanizi who had a stellar performance at the helm of economic policy at first was later found out as the key man in the bloated public expenditure and numerous supplementary budgets that we are complaining about today.

Keith also was involved in so many other scandals including the famous one with trade and investment minister Evelyn Annite, at Uganda Telecommunications Limited (Utl). So, he comes in as a great economist with so many bones and skeletons in the cupboard. Therefore today, the President would perhaps need to engage the new Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Ramathan Ggoobi because he seems to be the `only` Ugandan with the brains that understand the local economy.

But Ggoobi, who is a brother in the profession (he is an author and policy critic like me), is faced with dilemmas of his own because of the way he has performed so far. So much so, that the President doesn’t know whether to fully trust him or to give him time to do his work, mostly because he is still in a-work-in-progress scenario. Actually, last year when Russia attacked Ukraine and sparked a rise in fuel prices, President Museveni was interviewed by the BBC radio presenter, Allan Kasujja who asked him why the economy was doing badly and why Ugandans were economically lamenting.

And the President affirmatively answered that, “that boy,” in reference to Ramathan Ggoobi, had refused to release the money into circulation. By making such a revelation, the President was being a good man, by showing that he could appoint someone and trust him fully with the job at hand, even if there are obvious hiccups along the way. We are not being critical of Ggoobi but evidence shows that during his reign, public servants have not been paid as promptly as it was before he came in. And the debt burden as risen to a statistic beyond GDP, and inflation continues to wreak havoc.

Today there are claims that some civil servants were paid at different times. For instance, some MPs were paid while others were not paid for the same period sparking queries whether government was paying acordi8ng to alphabetical order of names or simply making selective payments. Given such a scenario, a steadier brain would question whether someone at the high end is making such mistakes to make Ramathan Ggoobi look bad in the eyes of the President or it’s a malicious venture that is benefiting someone powerful.

Am tempted to think that the mafia could be behind these selective salary payments and delays in releasing government money. But is the President now aware of some of these developments? Yes, he needs to consult his economic advisors about some of these things. But the last time I checked, I found that Mr. Museveni had very many presidential advisors on politics, the military, all regions in the country and media and very few on matters of policy and economic issues.

For instance, when it comes to matters of security or military, he can call on his gurus like Gen Salim Saleh (this one is more into production than issues of political or military) , Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba (he enjoys twitting), Gen David Muhoozi (doesn’t enjoy the limelight), Gen David Sejusa (but this one is too controversial to be consulted for advise) and many more.

The President also has very many advisors on the media starting from the cerebral-serial columnist John Nagenda (who has written many articles professing his negative attitude towards Sevo’s longevity project ), the chaotic intellectual and former PPS Tamale Mirundi (who meanders from praising Bobi Wine to attacking NRM ministers), Sarah Kagingo (the beautiful girl who fears to annoy Sevo and embarrasses herself as a sycophant who is willing to get crucified with the system) and many other advisors who are confused about their job description.

I have dwelt on the character and personality of some presidential advisors to demonstrate how far detached they are from their job descriptions and the appointing authority. Of course, one can easily argue that the president is constitutionally given vast powers in the Constitution to appoint people with whom to run the government. But we need to interrogate whether the people he appoints add value to the country or not. If the country is going in the wrong direction like it is today, especially in regard to social policy and economy, we need to interrogate the people around him. What are they doing?

Don’t we need a shift in policy?

Interestingly, reforms, shift in policy, self-re-evaluation is needed in most sectors of the Ugandan government to make it more efficient. But unfortunately, the Ugandan President simply bumps into these issues accidentally and issues directives, the President Amin style. For instance, last week, he issued a directive against travelling abroad for government officials, Members of Parliament and Civil Servants. This was at the commissioning of the Uganda Petroleum Institute Kigumba (UPIK) on Saturday.

Yet this is something we have tried to bring to his attention but he had never paid attention to them until last Saturday! Interestingly or paradoxically, immediately after preaching the useless trips, he embarked on a trip to Dubai for a three-day visit for himself! The trips abroad, the horrendous public expenditure, the bloated cabinet, the big number of RDCs and their deputies are obviously milking the cow Uganda, beyond reasonable doubt. While we are good at pushing up the expenditure, we are not looking at the revenue side and the policies that can make us the money we spend.

If the President is committed to reducing wastage of government resources, he needs to first of all look into the issue of the salaries that is paid to all public servants and interrogate whether they are justified or not. At one time, the former Executive Director of KCCA, madam Jennifer Musisi was earning a horrendous UGX432M (USD178,509.08) annually as a salary excluding other financial privileges! How can one person earn all this money?

THE WAY FORWARD? The merging of public parastatals, halting foreign trips for MPS and other government officials was good, but not sufficient to stop the hemorrhage in government budget. The President should institute a salaries and wages commission to look into the justification of what every public servant earns. Without that move, he will be simply dillydallying with the problem of public expenditure.

Early in the year, the American Speaker of Congress, Nancy Pelosi paid a courtesy visit to Taiwan that angered the authorities in Beijing. The Chinese authorities nastily responded by warning the US to move cautiously, or risk regrettable repercussions with Chinese President Xi accusing the United States of “playing with fire” over its Taiwan policy.

The obvious reality is that the U.S-China relations have gone rotten. Pelosi’s trip came at a particularly fragile moment. Over the preceding months, frictions between Washington and Beijing were growing amid China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the war between Russia and Ukraine seems to be dying out with Moscow losing badly on all fronts, China is trying to replicate President Vladimir Putin’s imperialistic designs by attacking Taiwan.

Remember Russia had managed to attack and annex parts of the Crimea in 2013, without any diplomatic repercussions as the world powers played the appeasement policy similar to what they did with Adolph Hitler in 1940. The Crimea incident was therefore a booster and had a domino effect for the Chinese who also thought they would invade Taiwan, in the same way Russia did with the Crimea.

But as time went by, Russia got bolder and invaded Ukraine in a war that has damaged its overall reputation. Without going into any deliberations, it’s an open secret that China openly supports Russia and its imperialistic designs in the region. With that development, you see an open alliance between China, Russia, Iran and some small African countries like Uganda. This explains why US President, Joe Biden invited African leaders to dissuade them from taking sides with either Russia or China.

The only good thing about the whole probability of another war is that Russia has already lost its war in Ukraine to the extent that they even asked for a ceasefire which was flatly rejected by President Zelensky. If Russia had managed to succeed in Ukraine and takeover Kiev, China was going to swiftly invade Taiwan as well. Therefore, our saving grace lies in the absolute defeat of Russia, which we hope to restrain China from getting the temptation to invade Taiwan, a territory it considers as its own.

Should war of any kind happen to take place involving China, the global economy is likely to hit a terrible recession that will affect us in ways never seen before, because China is our biggest trading partner. In my last article, I criticized President Museveni for making projections about the state of the economy and warned that despite of his optimistic projections, we are likely to have another tragedy on our hands that will make it very difficult to bring down the fuel prices this year.

The biggest worry about the Ugandan economy is that it’s more of rain-based economy. But sometimes too much rain is bad for the crops` harvests. Given our agro-based economy and its dynamics, you should pray that the rain will balance well with the sun to enable us achieve good crop yields that will drive down the food prices, even if the fuel remains high.

Therefore, while the NRM strategists are preparing for drought through their irrigation schemes, they might be surprised by incessant rains that will negatively affect crop yields. Once that tragedy happens, then crops like coffee which is causing a lot of hanky-panky arguments in the corridors of power is going to suffer terrible setbacks.

Remember that while it’s natural that coffee needs rain, it also badly needs a good supply of sunshine to dry it to perfect quality levels. You ought to recall that some few years ago, the Ugandan maize suffered setbacks in quality because it did not get enough sunshine to dry it properly. As a result of that, the Ugandan maize developed some toxins and was promptly rejected by the Kenyan government.

Today, the government has failed to find the solutions for the rising fuel prices and also embarked on a very tough tax collection exercise that is likely to make it difficult for Ugandans to do business. Another cause for concern is that power tariffs are likely to remain as high as they have been, despite the fact that the Ugandan government claims to have chased Eskom and other foreign companies that were running the power industry.

With high power tariffs, high taxes, high fuel prices, low crop yields and unpredictable weather in the mix, you should expect 2023 to be even tougher than the Covid-19 stricken years of 2020 and 2021. And if the worse gets to the worst and China attacks Taiwan, we shall be in a very big trouble.

During that Q and A session, the journalists tried their best to ask questions ranging from the recent Africa-US summit, the security situation in the great lakes’ region with particular mention of the ADF and M23 rebel groups, the politically motivated kidnaps of Ugandans with divergent political views, the rising fuel prices, the high cost of living vis-à-vis the inflation, and the Russia-Ukraine war amongst others.

However, it was deeply disappointing that my fellow journalists failed to pin the President about some pressing issues prevailing in the country today. One such issue that should have been brought to the attention of the President concerns the harsh after-effects of the Covid19 lockdown and how it has devastated the economy.

In more well-governed countries, governments have instituted a stimulus package to help the private sector to recover from the Covid-19 lockdowns. For instance, immediately after lifting the restrictions, the then Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta announced a stimulus package worth millions of dollars for the sectors that were badly hit by the lockdown.

The second issue that was not covered but remains pertinently crucial was the continued illegal detention of the two Members of Parliament, Hon Mohamed Ssegirinya and Hon Allan Ssewanyana, who have been incarcerated under very dubious circumstance. It would have been interesting how Museveni would have reacted to a question that puts him directly on the spot about his recent deviation from the principles of human rights.

In fact, Museveni’s Uganda of the 21st century is, in many ways similar to the Uganda of the 70s and 80s when Ugandans lived under constant fear of either getting kidnapped, or killed. When Museveni and his group maneuvered their way to power in 1986, he was very emotional about the issue of human rights and respect for life and property, but today, it doesn’t look like the case to him anymore. I think I have deviated a bit.

The Falsehoods

The issue of discussion was supposed to be about the lies that the President was made to transmit last year to the gullible Ugandans, especially when he was asked about the surging fuel prices which have made it impossible for the economy to recover. And without thinking critically about the repercussions of what he was about to say, he said that the fuel prices may not necessarily be a problem because he has devised a grand plan that is rock solid to overcome the surging fuel prices.

He revealed that he had spoken with some development partners to develop electric motor cycles that would replace the fuel guzzling motorcycles. His plan would require every motor cyclist to simply take his fuel consuming machine to Museveni and replace it with an electric vehicle (EVs). Well, we are not saying that it is impossible to replace fuel guzzlers. But we are saying, how feasible is that grand plan and how long it will take to help with the issue of surging fuel prices in the country today?

The irony of it all is that he is suggesting a solution that is realistically long term for a problem that is very short term. Which country has been able to succeed with this idea of electric motor cycles? In Uganda, we have started making electric cars-proto-types called Kiira which have excited President Museveni to believe that he can replace all the fuel consuming machines with EVs in the country.

But the last time I checked, there were only two plying the Ugandan roads. But the President is very optimistic that they can replace over five million motor cycles in the country. Which country has ever managed to replace all machines with electric cars? Can Ugandans afford these EVs? President Museveni himself once said that a hybrid 5-seater Ugandan made Kiira Electric Vehicle (EV) is estimated to cost about Shs100 million.

That is way out of the range of most Ugandan car owners who buy used cars of under Shs20 million. The people advancing suggestions of replacing electric cars are these climate change illusionists who are scared that the climate is badly being affected by the pollution from the fuel guzzlers. But some of us are saying that these climate change activists are not only confusing the world but they are simply scaremongering.

At first, former US Vice President Al Gore threatened us that the world was about to come to an end because of climate change, but he was ably challenged and silenced completely. The reality is that the climate will continue to alternate whether there is pollution or not. Of course, we need to do some environmental protection, but if it means that it requires closing industries and getting rid of motor cars because of pollution, then we strongly disagree with those environmentalists.

In the Bible, we read about Noah’s ark which was built when the whole world was struck by floods. Can these activists explain why there was flooding during the biblical days. Was it because there was lots of pollution at a time when there was no single industry or motor vehicle in the world that could pollute anything?

But I must stress that President Museveni’s idea of electric cars is not motivated by the desire for environmental protection but he used it as a grand solution as a close substitute for fuel. And I must stress that by asserting electric motor cycles as a replacement for motor cycles as a solution should be regarded as one of the biggest falsehoods of the year. He however went on to say that the fuel prices will come down when the war between Russia and Ukraine come to an end – which then takes us to the second falsehood.

The Second Falsehood

In regard to the Russian war with Ukraine, the President confidently suggested to the attentive journalists, that it would end much sooner than later.  He was trying to sound very optimistic about an event that is not in his own jurisdiction at all. In fact, for him to even dream of an earlier end to the war in Russia is another falsehood of its own because the global dynamics are inclining towards more wars.

 In fact, clear-minded observers are predicting more harsh economic times to come this year because the world is preparing for another war that will involve China and the western powers. China has already mobilized for war with the motive of taking over Taiwan.  In the event that China embarks on that war, we might have much tougher economic times as prices of most products will all go up. Why?

Because we, in Africa, trade more with China than we do with Russia. In fact, the only known Russian product sold in plenty to Africa is the AK47 (the Kalashnikov) rifle that is claimed to have killed millions of Africans. The reality is that the fuel prices are most likely to remain high and President Museveni’s idea of replacing motor vehicles with EVs is most likely to succeed in 2060!

American President Joe Biden made a passionate plea to integrate Africa in the strategic plans of his country and enticed the leaders with a USD55Bn outlay to kick off the renewed friendship. This pledge shows that the American administration is willing to listen to good proposals from the African leaders but they are a bit arrogant not to take advantage of the goodwill.

For instance, the Americans delivered most of the vaccines for the Covid-19 pandemic. This shows that they can deliver on most of what we cannot produce. Our (I am talking about Africa) problem is that we have leaders who think they can challenge the western powers (remember Robert Mugabe, and Ghaddafi?). This arrogance has made Africa lose the opportunity to discus and present the real issues to the bigger western powers.

Ugandan President Museveni has tried to challenge and even openly dismiss the western powers and yet, his country largely depends on their resources to make things move to a more reasonable direction.  The western powers have spent trillions to African economies in the sectors of health, education and even security. We should have encouraged the western powers to assist us build infrastructure like roads, railways, airports, ferries, power dams etc.

But because of arrogance African leaders try to impress by claiming that they don’t want aid but want to trade with the western powers, we lose track. Yet the reality is that most African countries may have the minerals and products that they can trade but there are issues that make it difficult to trade them on the international market. This shows why Museveni’s AGOA failed miserably.

It also explains why this time Museveni was silent about his old song of promoting the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) which had created a trade arrangement between Ugandan and the United States of America. AGOA was a trade arrangement which collapsed at its inception because Uganda couldn’t fulfill its production potential. Although the US market was open to Ugandan products, the East African country lacked the potential to produce those particular products at a competitive level.

There was the case of the cotton fabrics which Ugandan had intended to earmark as the first product to export to the US market but ended up as an embarrassment, when the Bugolobi factory closed before it could produce any cotton fabrics. This time Museveni has again driven in the same direction of agitating for trade even when he knows that he almost has nothing to sell to the American market. He came up with a very interesting acronym of ITTS (Investment, Trade, Tourism and Security) as the message he was trying to advance at this US-African leader’s summit.

When you look into his message, you will find that he was simply recycling the same arguments like those of AGOA. If you claim that you don’t want aid but you want trade, do you have any products that can impress the international market? Recent experience shows that the answer to that question is an affirmative NO. Although Uganda has got plenty of goods that can be put on the market, they need to be upgraded to fit the international market standards. For instance, we have very good pineapples here, but making them qualify to the standards, need a sophisticated value addition that can make them compete at the highest level. It’s true, we have cotton, but we don’t have the means to make it compete with the cotton from other countries because we have failed to add the necessary value that can advance its quality.

What does this mean?

This obviously means that Museveni should have first tried to convince the western powers to give us machines to set up industries that can add instant value to our cotton, coffee, pineapples, beef, fish, Chicken, eggs, tomatoes, hide and skins, etc. After setting up the industries and making sure that they can produce high quality products that can satisfy the local and regional market, he would then run to the western powers to grant us the market to sell these products.

But the problem is that he is putting the cart before the horse. In other words, he is busy pulling the cart and praying that a horse will show up from somewhere. That cannot happen. As a result of this helter-skelter way of doing things, we (Uganda) have even failed to match the standards on the regional market. Our brothers of Kenya who have a much bigger economy even slapped a ban on some of our Ugandan products because of their poor quality. The Kenyans rejected our maize because it had toxins. Now if your maize cannot even rise to the standards of Kenya, how do you expect it to penetrate the American market?

The way forward? Well, as stated earlier, we should have pushed the western powers to help us build powerful things like the railway line from Kampala to Cape Town, Kampala to Kinshasa and beyond. Build power dams, airports and ports etc. Otherwise, agitating for trade and tourism with the western is simply a waste of time because our products are too poor to compete in the international market.

When critically observed, of all football competitions, the World Cup is the easiest tournament to win. Why? There are very few games a team needs to win at the world cup. Because, first of all, on average, a given team needs to win seven only games to win here. In fact, Argentina managed to play Saudi Arabia, Poland, Mexico, Australia, Netherlands, Croatia and France to win the Trophy.

Secondly, you need to also realize that you can be fixed in a group with very weak teams like Qatar, Saudi Arabia or even China. On the contrary, you need to play and win over thirteen games to win the European Club Champions League. Therefore, I think it would be better to add more teams to expand the world cup teams that participate so that a given team plays at least ten games to win it.

And since Morocco has managed to play to the last four (semifinals), Africa deserves some two more slots to expand the tournament to a more competitive tournament. Another suggestion concerns the number of substitutions made in a given game. I think five substitutions are very few in a given game. Remember a world cup team comprises players selected across the globe, to play for the national team.

Now it’s not fair to select 24 players for the tournament and only revolve around using only eleven plus five substitutions. This is national team football which requires a given team to use as many players as it can to exhaust its full potential. Simply allow the team to select from the 24 players for a given game. In most games, we saw how teams would play games into extra time and it was obvious even players who had come as substitutes were completely exhausted.

A case in point is Japan, which pushed Croatia into extra time and eventually to penalties. If you observed critically, it was evident that the Japanese players couldn’t lift their legs to take the penalties. If there had been a provision to change, it would have necessitated making some changes to enable fresh players finish up the game in extra time. Therefore, allowing the team to make substitutions to the whole team harms no one because it reflects the full potential of a given team. Those innovations can go a long way in making the world cup a more entertaining tournament. The limitation on the substitutions made some teams appear weaker than they are.

Teams like England and France have lots of talent that they cannot be limited to five subs only. Because of the limitation in the number of subs, most coaches made errors in selection which cost their respective teams. A team like England had very good players that it was practically difficult to fix them into one eleven. You could name two elevens of the English team and they all give you a value for money performance. For instance, England has players like Alexander Trent, who is considered the best right back in the world but he never got a single minute of world cup football!

Because of the limitation on the number of subs, managers made mistakes which could have been avoided if they had room to make more changes. Get this, the French coach couldn’t field talented players like Eduardo Camavinga and Kinsley Corman in most matches.  But when he got the chance to field them in the final against Argentina, they changed the game, which France was losing 2-0 and forced it into a 3-3 draw after extra time and into penalties. With England, you can accuse the manager, Gareth Southgate for having the wisdom to play Rushford, Grealish and Alexander Trent from the start or after half time. But you can also argue rightly that a flexible provision of more subs could have given him the space to give them playing time.

Of The Racist Ugandans

Another observation about the Qatar 2022 World Cup was the level of sectarianism that was exhibited by Ugandans. When Morocco went on to play the semifinals, most of the Ugandans made blunt racist remarks that the Moroccan team was not African by appearance. And as such, most Ugandans made lots of noise when France beat our African brothers from North Africa at the semifinals. They rooted for France simply because it has typical black skinned Africans! These are the same people who complain about the racism by the white people in the Diaspora.

While we are agitating for African unity of whole continent, most of our people still consider our Arab brothers as foreigners residing on the same African continent! While we claim that football is a uniting force, this World Cup also demonstrated that it can also evoke terrible divisions in society. But my ultimate prayer is that FIFA should adopt those aforementioned suggestions of adding at least two more slots for African teams and also allowing teams to make as many as eleven substitutions to exhaust the potential of the teams.

Last week, Uganda’s Ministry of Energy announced that it will re-nationalize its power sector to reduce costs by divesting from its foreign private partners, such as South Africa’s Eskom and the international Umeme consortium. The Ugandan officials claimed that the objective of this reform was to “provide electricity to Ugandans at affordable prices”.  What a shame!

Can you imagine these fellows are just realizing that power is being delivered expensively? It has taken the NRM years to sober up and get back to the drawing board to deliver affordable power to the citizens! Some of us have decried the high-power tariffs and advised and counter advised government to reduce them to no avail. Research shows that as of March 2022, the price of electricity was 0.164 U.S. Dollar (a direct equivalent of 650 Ugandan shillings per kWh for households and 0.128 U.S. Dollar (489 Ugandan shillings at the current exchange rate) for businesses, which include all components of the electricity bills such as the cost of power, distribution and taxes.

But you will be amazed to the fact that Tanzania’s power tariff is much lower than that of Uganda. As of March 2022, the price of electricity in Tanzania was 0.098 U.S. Dollar (362 shillings) per kWh for households and 0.101 U.S. Dollar (373 Ugandan shilling) for businesses which include all components of the electricity bills such as the cost of power, distribution and taxes. Now the difference between one unit of electricity in Uganda at 650 shillings and Tanzania at 362 shillings per kilowatt, is a whopping 300 Ugandan shillings.

In simple terms, it means that Ugandans are paying twice the money for each kilowatt of electricity. These days, Ugandans have started enduring incessant load shedding from time to time. With good planning, this should never have happened at all. But due to corruption, which we wrote about recently as being the cancer that will eventually bring down Museveni, Isimba dam, which was supposed to contribute 183megawats to the power steam has reportedly broken down due to the poor quality of engineering, procurement of building materials and construction.

There are reports that the corrupt procurement people diverted most of the cement meant for the construction of the dam leading to its braking down. For your information, Isimba dam came at a cost of $570m (Shs2.2trillion) which is calculated to be almost 6% of Uganda’s economy which stands at 37 trillion shillings. One of the reasons why may Ugandans turned into rabid opponents of this government was because they got lost in transition from their core responsibilities of running a government that works for the people and instead turned into power thirsty dictatorship that doesn’t mind about the plight of the people.

When President Museveni announced the structural adjustment programs, he made the decision to privatize most of the agencies that were involved in service delivery through the divesture program. The argument was that government was very poor at business and it needed to divest and concentrate on administration. Fine. When you divest, does it mean that you do it at the cost of other core national interests?

Remember government has got the mandate to serve the people by providing the services deemed to be difficult to be afforded by the private sector. But this is what the NRM did; In fact, evidence actually shows that instead of divesting and probably adopting the public –public sector arrangement to continue delivering services to Ugandans, the NRM government instead CLOSED those parastatals completely. Examples to this effect abound.

For instance, the NRM government stupidly closed Uganda Commercial Bank which had built tentacles almost in all corners of the country. Two and a half decades later, they have realized their mistakes and are trying to revive it because they have found it difficult to disburse the parish development model money. Simple common sense shows that UCB should have been the bank on the country side to handle money for giving out to the citizens as soft credit in the form of Parish Development Model.

More to that, the NRM closed Uganda Transport Company together with the Uganda Railways with the selfish intentions of creating market for their fleet of buses around the country. Although President Museveni usually brags that the private sector has filled the gap in the transport sector, the reality on the ground shows that it was a stupid decision. When the taxi operators tried to overcharge the transport fares, Museveni tried to intervene by sending his trusted lieutenant called Major Nakalema to force them to reduce! Oh dear!

Instead of sending Nakalema, UTC and the Uganda Railways should have been the solution to assist the citizens move at pocket friendly fares, By the way, today Museveni and his people are busy fighting to revive the Ugandan Railway line which they deliberately left to rot some few years ago! Of course, it’s a good thing to wake up. Today they have realized their mistake and renationalized it and there are claims that the government will create the Uganda National Electricity Company to manage production and distribution and thus “minimize” the “excessively expensive part of the private capital invested”.

Having embarked on merging agencies and parastatals last month, which were either duplicating roles or making loses, and resorting to the re-rationalization strategy shows that the NRM government seems to be waking up from its slumber, talk of Rip Van Winkle who slept and woke up after many years only to realize that the world had moved on. Some of us are still waiting for Museveni to wake up from his sleep and revive all service delivery agencies and also revive the Cooperatives to redeem the agricultural sector regardless of whether it takes him a hundred years.

It’s actually believed that if it was not for the incessant corruption, Africa should have achieved middle income status a long time ago. According to the available official records from a survey conducted by the Inspectorate of Government, Uganda alone loses UGX20Tn every year to corruption.  For starters that amount is half of Uganda’s overall economy. The IGG together with the German Society for International Co-operation conducted a survey in various government departments and discovered that Uganda loses money in almost each of the sectors of the economy.

According to the same survey, at least 131 billion Shillings is lost through taxation, 459 billion Shillings lost in user fees utilities, another 820 billion Shillings lost in natural resources, and 15 billion Shillings lost in environmental degradation. UGX2Bn is lost as a result of absenteeism in government departments, UGX451Bn in health care and education services, UGX86Bn in security provision, UGX590Bn in procurement and budgeting and, UGX233Bn in regulation.

Without boring you with the figures and statistics, we need to discuss corruption on its own and figure out how it has managed to thrive this long. While appearing on one of the radios in town, one vocal member of parliament for Nakaseke, Hon Luttamaguzi said that the NRM government is as inseparable with corruption as Siamese twins. And he insisted that killing one of the two leads to an immediate death of the other.

While it’s easier to lament and show concern about it and even castigate it as an evil, we need to appreciate the reality that it’s a very difficult vice to curb completely. Corruption is as old as the bible itself. In that holy book, we read that when Jesus Christ was crucified, the four soldiers who were in charge of his execution divided the expensive robe he was putting on and sold it for twenty pieces of silver.

The Nakaseke MP was saying the right things but he went off the mark when he strongly misled the listeners by saying that the former leaders, meaning Presidents Apollo Milton obote and Gen Idi Amin,were not corrupt at all. “Bali abassajja bali bagala nyoo ensi yaabwe, tebaali babbi nakatono;” he said, loosely translated that the “former leaders were not corrupt at all because they were patriotic and loved their country with all their hearts.”

But while its true that the NRM government has been the most corrupt government in Uganda`s history, the former leaders were also as corrupt. Let’s give examples to expose the past leaders. It’s on record that before he even became President, Dr. Milton Obote conducted a wedding considered as one of the most lavishly expensive in Africa by the standards of those days.

Graced by President Frederick Muteesa and with the best man as Martin Aliker, while the Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta was among the groomsmen, it is said to be the largest wedding in Africa’s history where the groom invited 2,000 guests; and almost half of the entire gov’t officials in attendance. The details show that the reception was at Lugogo Stadium and Parliament reportedly voted on the budget of £3,000 for 150 cases of champagne; £2,200 for 900 cases of beer; and £2,000 for new furniture for the PM’s lodge in Entebbe.

The then Prime Minister managed to waste more than ten million British pounds on that wedding. President Amin himself also conducted a wedding in 1975 that cost almost five times what Obote had spent on his wedding in 1963. When Idi Amin stormed power in 1971, his first act of corruption was to forcefully takeover the property owned by the Asians in 1972. Although there are allegations that Amin managed to compensate the Asians, there are no records to show that they were indeed compensated for the properties they had worked and toiled for very many years.

But one of the most interesting stories about corruption I want to share with you concerns the way it affected President Amin. When Amin provoked Tanzania into an unnecessary stupid war in 1979, his army was hit by a superior set of artillery which forced them to retreat. The artillery piece which was later found to be a ballistic missile bomber commonly known as saba-saba was hitting Ugandan soldiers with devastating accuracy that it would target their source pans.

When the shells of the weapon were analyzed by the Ugandan army at the army headquarters at republic house, they realized that it was a Russian made BM21 rocket bomber. Amin promptly sent one of his trusted officers to go abroad and purchase ammunition that would counter the artillery of the Tanzanians. But the said official NEVER reached Russia or anywhere to purchase the weapons.

Meanwhile, by the time Gen Amin realized that the officials he sent was not going to return, the Tanzanians had advanced and were already in Mpigi with plans to overrun Kampala. Amin was faced with only one option of fleeing the country to save his life. That act of corruption is one of the factors blamed for the fall of Amin in 1979. Therefore, to claim that former governments were not corrupt is not only wrong, but its erroneous and misleading.

The overall truth is that although Apollo Milton Obote and Idi Amin were also corrupt in some ways, President Museveni’s government has taken corruption to another level. In fact, while Museveni has managed to survive for long, he has been lucky not to fall victim to corruption like Amin was in 1979. Remember the war in the north was prolonged, because the procurement officers were buying faulty ammunitions, defunct military helicopters and exaggerating numbers of the armed personnel at the frontline.

Without corruption, Joseph Kony would never have lasted more than five years. But it was corruption that allowed it because the officers manipulated the war efforts as an opportunity to make money. And while Hon Luttamaguzi claims that corruption is serving the regime well like Siamese twins, it’s safe to also suggest that its most likely to be the number one cause of Museveni’s downfall. Just like President Idi Amin was brought down because of corruption, there is a good chance that the current government might fall by the same sword.

Some few months ago, the media was awash with suggestions that government was in advanced stages of merging all agencies that were duplicating roles or blowing resources. From the look of things however, it seemed that the government was concentrating all the energies in pursing the option of merging government agencies at the expense of other measures that can lead to a sizeable reduction on the cost of administration.

A few months ago, State Minister for Public Service, Hon Mary Grace Mugasa presented a report to the NRM Parliamentary Caucus, which revealed that government had resolved to retain 88 government agencies and merge, mainstream, and transfer the functions of 69 agencies out of 157 that had been reviewed in 2018.

This was intended to streamline government architecture to enable efficient and effective service delivery and mostly, address wasteful expenditure and challenges of duplication of work, conflicts and mandate overlap. The immediate implication was that Uganda was to save up to UGX649Bn ($167,148,846) annually, from the rationalization, merging, and mainstreaming of 53 government agencies and functions according to the Ministry of Public Service. This move deserves a clap or standing ovation of some sort.

We honestly applaud the move to trim public expenditure by taking on the rationalization reform to merge several of these autonomous bodies which were agreeably created without clear justification, some being pseudo-government projects, while others have had their mandates overtaken by events.

However, there are justified claims that these agencies were formed to increase efficiency in service delivery but the problem now portends on whether an appraisal has been carried out to determine whether the desired objectives have been achieved or not, before undertaking the merging process.

An appraisal

There are those that have lived to their expectations and indeed delivered while others have been practical failures. The obvious should have been to simply trust the mainstream agencies to deliver to their expected mandate rather than creating new ones. For instance, the state house anticorruption desk is vaguely doing what the IGG is supposed to do.

The Multiplicity of these government agencies should never have happened to begin with, because the Ugandan taxpayer has been overburdened by an over-bloated public service. These bourgeoning agencies have over time become a major strain on the national treasury at the expense of efficient service delivery. Despite the fact that it is a good move to embark on the merging and streamlining of these agencies, it’s not enough. More needs to be done to cut down on the cost of public administration.

The facts

The 2021 Auditor General’s report shows that only 13 out of the 26 public corporation and state enterprises evaluated were profit-making. In August this year, President Museveni supported the decision and accused most of the government agencies of not working but rather spending the money allocated to them from their mother ministries and implored the NRM MPs to back the rationalization reform

He also said that apart from research and farmer-institutions, only profit-making parastatals should be spared while money-eating parastatals should be gotten rid of in order to save government billions of shillings. But the President did not elaborate on whether the bigger Cabinet, bigger Parliament of 520 MPs, hundreds of presidential advisors and RDCs, which are not known to make any profit to the state coffers.

At 71 ministers strong, Uganda has the third-largest cabinet in the world after North Korea and Kenya. This is in circumstances where the global average of ministers is 30 while average for Sub-Saharan Africa is 40. Rwanda has got a cabinet of 27 and Burundi 29 ministers but you can justify that by noting they are much smaller countries with a smaller population than Uganda to necessitate a bigger cabinet.

But its shocking that much bigger countries have smaller cabinet than Uganda. For instance, Nigeria which is five times bigger with a population of 211 million people has only 54 cabinet ministers. In Tanzania, following the late President John Pombe Magufuli’s reelection in 2020, he unveiled his new cabinet of 23 ministers yet Tanzania is about 4 times bigger than Uganda.

President Museveni has the tendency of hoodwinking Ugandans by showing that he has got the spirit to improve things yet to the contrary, the reality is completely the opposite. As we speak, Museveni has got more advisors than any known president on earth, with 139 of them siphoning state resources with impunity.

You need to listen to this

In January this year, the Office of the President of Uganda reported a funding gap of UGX5.1 billion to enable the purchase of vehicles for the newly recruited presidential advisors. These included new ones like former Prime Ministers John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, Ruhakana Rugunda and former Vice Presidents Edward Ssekandi and Prof Gilbert Bukenya.

Another UGX4.23Bn was also needed to facilitate investiture ceremonies and procurement of medals, while UGX7Bn has been budgeted for construction of office space for Resident District Commissioners (RDCs.) According to research, we found out that the NRM government deployed a total of 146 RDCs and 107 of these are renting, 15 are in government-built houses and 24 are in houses owned by Districts.

Some of the government-constructed houses are in the districts of Lamwo, Abim, Amuru, Kiryandongo, Kamuli, Buhweju, Bundibugyo, Lwengo, Rubirizi, Butaleja, Adjumani, Butambala, Otuke and Luuka. According to reliable sources, the office of the President constructs only one office accommodation each year. This implies that it would take 110 years to construct houses for all RDCs! With all this, you don’t need a rocket scientist to show where Ugandan tax payer`s money is being wasted.

The way forward? Ugandans should interrogate what President Museveni is doing with the 146 RDCs, 139 advisors, and 83 cabinet ministers. Before he postures to rationalize and merge government agencies, he should first justify the cost of administration in regard to officials that work directly for him.