Last Sunday, I noted that a combination of runaway corruption and getting our priorities wrong could render Uganda uncompetitive in a large trading block.

Unfortunately, many of Uganda's major company executives seem to have decided that they would rather live with this problem than risk total strangulation by demanding a cleaner and more competent government.

Most would flee if asked to join a peaceful demonstration against the excesses of government. About the priorities, I brought up the case of the dilapidated Customs Parking Yard at the Malaba border post, where Uganda Revenue Authority collects billions of shillings in taxes every week, and where a month-long threatened strike had finally materialised, coinciding with the much-hyped tripartite regional summit in Kampala.

Any government with a sense of shame would have rushed to do something about the ugly exposure. A full week after the strike, President Museveni stopped at Malaba on his way to Kenya for a state visit. As usual, he waved at the crowds, probably expecting a "We love you" response, and "A fourth term please". What he got were pleas about the parking yard.

The President inquired what was wrong with the parking yard. The people reported that it was in a terrible state, and the President promised to look at the yard when he returns from Kenya, and to solve the problem. (See Daily Monitor, October 28.)

This kind of situation is supposed to be unbelievable, although Ugandans now read such stories without any expression of shock.

But are we (Ugandans) in the pre-colonial 18th century?

Mr Museveni often disparages Africa's traditional rulers for not uniting their tribal entities into large states, which he says exposed them to slavery and colonialism.

It is intriguing to speculate how someone with Mr Museveni's instincts would have ruled in the pre-colonial era.

Sure, there would have been plenty of bloodshed much of the time; but, using spears and moving on foot, I doubt whether he would have established and sustained a stable state even as big as present-day Ankole.

In spite of today's technological advantages and successful examples of multi-departmental government in other countries, not to mention his vision of a continental government, Mr Museveni has to personally (repeat, personally) inspect and solve the Malaba Parking Yard problem! It is exactly like an African chief 300 years ago. If he became the President of the United States of Africa, he would need over 100 years in power to renovate all Africa's major Customs parking yards; that is, if such yards were still in use.

Suddenly, Uganda alone looks too big for the NRM administration.

Let us ask: Have the Malaba and Busia entry points been left to decay to help Ugandan producers compete more "favourably" against the Kenyans in the race to markets in Rwanda, Eastern D.R. Congo and Southern Sudan?

And a less weird question: Did the President's handlers engineer a blaze of distractions to prevent him from reading the front-page newspaper stories about Malaba? If so, why? Or, maybe, was the President deliberately rigging his memory, feigning ignorance, so that the truck-drivers should "forgive" his government for having done nothing yet? If so, it implies that the President expects Ugandans to expect only him to solve national problems.

But then, why do we have the ministries of Finance and Works?

Well, a heartless question, considering that for several weeks now, the minister of Finance has been wriggling in anguish in the sordid trenches of Temangalo.

And a hopeless question, when you remember that the minister of Works must be already deaf from the din about the state of Uganda's roads and collapsing buildings. Indeed, if you were in his position, you would probably spend most of your working life marvelling and celebrating that you are still in your job.

So perhaps there were good reasons, after all, why out of the 26 heads of state expected at last week's summit on regional trade, only six thought Uganda was a serious broker.