The Weekly Observer last Friday shifted to new and bigger premises at Plot 1, Tagore Crescent in Kamwokya, just after Family Planning and UWESO. Apart from being bigger, the place will afford us a better working environment as we position ourselves to serve the public even better.

The shifting was done in the real spirit under which the paper was founded. Graduates employed to do professional work participated in lifting desks and tables as they re-arranged their offices. This exercise reminded me of the day this newspaper began in March, 2004.

With a strong zeal to make it succeed, we were willing to do everything, including driving newspapers to the up-country markets ourselves.

Carol Nakazibwe bought me my first office chair and saved me the hardship of a plastic one. Ours was a comradeship relationship with the same stake in our new home.

Of course when a company makes some money and begins paying salaries, the relationship changes and capitalism sets in. You now begin concentrating on what someone has not done as opposed to what he has done.

So I was humbled when I saw colleagues, including my boss James Tumusiime, lifting furniture. With that spirit the sky is the limit.

This illustration helps me remind the NRM leaders the spirit under which they began and nurtured their revolution that brought them into power, 23 years ago.

Hon. Nuwe Amanya Mushega keeps reminding me that the NRM was not a Banyankole conspiracy. People who joined the struggle believed in it since there were no material gains to attract anybody. Maybe that is why in the early stages of the NRM, these fellows addressed one another as "comrade". Even comrade Museveni detested these colonial titles such as "His Excellency".

It is the abandoning of this spirit of serving the nation without expecting rewards and immediate gains that is killing our country.

The NRM comradeship of course has disappeared and a new relationship based on property has set in.

Mr. Museveni no longer preaches the love for the country. He now uses jobs and money to hold a group of greedy fellows together.

An undeclared competition among our leaders on how much they can steal is in motion. A minister who is a friend recently told me that the state has a lot of money which cannot be exhausted by "stealing".

The new heroes of the NRM revolution are distinguished by how much wealth they have dubiously accumulated. The NRM leaders have become the "end justifies the means" mafia.

And the leader of the revolution just laughs as his agents are fleecing our country. Stealing public resources is no longer an offence that warrants sacking, as long as you remain loyal to the emperor.

So Gilbert Balibaseka Bukenya can influence NSSF managers to sell to him the company's Muyenga house at below-market price when there is another Ugandan willing to pay Shs 90 million more, and get away with it.

Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa Kahamba and Bukenya can preside over the importation of questionable CHOGM vehicles and no action is taken against them even with the availability of the Auditor General's report.

Of course some few individuals have selectively been arraigned before court.

I have a strong feeling that Museveni's blue eyed boy Amama Mbabazi will survive the NSSF turbulence. Like Bukenya, Amama harbours presidential ambitions and I see the Museveni machinery taking advantage of his role in this NSSF saga to finish him now and forever. Maybe that is the only punitive action that will be taken against him. I sincerely don't see Amama being arraigned before a court, which I think should be the case. For God's sake, how can you sell a village swamp at Shs 11 billion?

I need to be convinced why my money should continue being deducted and sent to NSSF. The Shs1 trillion in NSSF has been turned into the pocket money of the revolutionary leaders. The other day President Museveni directed the managers of the fund to throw some money into a commercial bank to enable highly indebted legislators borrow at low interest.

One of these days an NRM leader or functionary will walk into Bank of Uganda and fill a sack with dollars for his personal use.

I hear Amama and Co. wanted money to capitalize their bank and this is how they influenced NSSF to buy their swamp at Shs 11 billion.

How come Greenland and Cooperative banks were closed on account of being insolvent? So banks belonging to NRM leaders cannot be closed? Instead our savings have to be squandered to save them! At least if our leaders were fixing the potholes in the roads and stocking drugs in hospitals we wouldn't consider them so merciless.

God bless our country and a happy Ramadhan to all Muslims.

Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda, The author is Political, Editor of The Weekly Observer.