Vincent Nuwagaba
9 July 2009
opinion
Ugandan human rights activist Vincent Nuwagaba responds to an e-mail letter he received fron the Presidential Standards Task Force, apparently signed by President Museveni. Nuwagaba received the letter after submitting comments on issues from corruption to unemployment to the Ugandan government's web-based service for engaging with citizens.
On Monday 29 June 2009 at 12:10, I received an email purportedly from President Yoweri Museveni responding to the comments I had made on the Presidential Standards Task Force website. The author of the email said I clearly have personal vendetta against him as opposed to working for the good cause of all Ugandans. The president (or any other person who wrote the mail on behalf of the president) outlined 12 points and said points number 10 and 11, which talked about turning Uganda into a monarchy and hounding me out of my country were not worth addressing. I will address the president's concerns in turn.
1. DISSOCIATION FROM CORRUPT MINISTERS:
I wrote that the president cannot use ministers as an alibi in his bid to fight corruption when he is the one who has kept them around himself. It is documented in black and white that ministers that were censured by the 6th Parliament over accusations of corruption were recycled and appointed to senior cabinet positions in the aftermath of 2001 elections. The sole reason for their reappointment was because they vigorously and rigorously campaigned for President Museveni when he faced his former physician Dr Kizza Besigye. Actually, when the eyebrows were raised over the reappointment of these people, the president was not shy to tell everyone that they were censured out of sheer malice!
Furthermore, we have permanent ministers in some ministries. The minister in charge of works has been in power ever since I gained knowledge to date. This is despite the appalling road carnage as a result of the very poor state of our roads, with gullies and potholes virtually everywhere. It is rumoured that a road which ordinarily should have six layers ends up with three layers, with the money that would provide for the other three consumed by corrupt officials. It is clear that people who win government tenders and contracts do so either through bribery or patronage as opposed to meritocracy. As of now Makerere University Livingstone Drive is impassable. The president concedes that he has campaigned for some of them. Is it not clear that he who pays the piper calls the tune?
2. THE PRESIDENT DOESN'T CARE IF MINISTERS SNOOZE IN PARLIAMENT AND WAKE UP TO VOTE NATIONAL RESISTANCE MOVEMENT (NRM):
The president himself said it on radio in the run up to the 2001 parliamentary elections that the people of Kinkizi should vote Mr Amama Mbabazi as opposed to Garuga Musinguzi although the former slumbers in parliament because if he woke up he would vote the NRM position. Some of us believe the Movement position is Museveni's position. The president is an embodiment of the NRM party. Surprisingly, by then even Dr Kizza Besigye was still a movementist and he came under the banner of reform agenda which aimed at reforming the Movement.
3. THAT I (VINCENT NUWAGABA) AM MISINFORMED ABOUT THE NUMBER OF GRADUATES THIS COUNTRY HAS:
Makerere University, the biggest university whose enrolment is even bigger than all other Universities combined, has had only 59 graduations. The total number of Makerere's products ranges between 100,000 to 150,000, out of which number some merely get certificates and diplomas. Remember also that before it was undermined by government through denial of research funds and poor pay to the academic staff, Makerere used to be the Harvard of Africa and would attract very many foreign students. These cannot be counted as Ugandan graduates.
Truthfully, Uganda has less than one per cent of university graduates and I can stake my money on this if anyone proved me wrong. But I raised this matter in regard to graduate unemployment, to which the government has paid little attention. Today, we have many graduates running out of the country to do odd jobs (which in Ugandan parlance is termed as 'kyeyo') in America, Japan and the UK among other areas. My concern as a patriot and Pan-Africanist has been: Why can't the government provide or create jobs for the meagre number of graduates that we have? What sort of vision does the president have when peasants' children have remained jobless even after their parents have sold their land to have their children study? Parents sell their property to ensure their children access education which is believed to be a liberating tool. These children sadly never get jobs, as jobs are a preserve of those that are connected to the powers that be, either through blood, marriage, cronyism or patronage.
In fact, people hired as coursework mercenaries and those who run printing bureaus which forge academic transcripts are mostly university graduates with honours degrees but have failed to get jobs. Sadly, those who forge academic transcripts use them to get jobs. The government has proven incompetent to handle this small problem. Even when I suggested in my Sunday Monitor (16 March 2008) article 'Graft begets graft' that government could hire me as a consultant to fight that sort of corruption, all government officials kept a deaf ear. People in Uganda faced with unemployment problems are not those who haven't gone to school but the educated. The illiterate and semi-illiterate are happily employed as wheelbarrow pushers, boda boda (motor bike) cyclists, shoe shiners, chapatti bakers, etc.
4. THE PRESIDENT'S VISION:
Vision means a mental image or a dream. In leadership it denotes what one intends or envisages to achieve in a given period of time. I am fully convinced that at the moment, it is imprudent for the president to tell us about his vision when he has been given more than two uninterrupted decades to put his vision into reality. Any other person can talk about vision but not our dear president. It is also apparent that the president has deliberately refused or inadvertently failed to share his vision with other Ugandans. Not even his fellow NRM members! At this point in time we don't want a personal but a shared vision. As to whether some visions are never realised by their beholders or realised with difficulty, some of us feel it is reason enough why he should offload excess baggage from himself lest he dies under a heavy load that he is carrying. I want to restate that the president's vision was applicable before 1986, in 1986 or shortly thereafter. At the moment the vision talk is but hot air.
5. THAT THE PRESIDENT SHOULD BE VOTED ON THE BASIS OF WHAT HE HAS DONE AND NOT WHAT HE PROMISES:
In 1996 the president promised a community polytechnic for each sub county in his manifesto. To date I am yet to see one in my sub county Bitereko and neighbouring sub counties in Ruhinda. He promised in 2001 that universal secondary education (USE) was to begin in 2003 to cater for universal primary education (UPE) products who would have finished Primary Seven then. Universal secondary education was to be used as a campaign tool in 2006. Yet both USE and UPE have raised many people's eyebrows over their quality and the reason is because they were not properly thought out but introduced for expediency (as vote winning gimmicks). I am not bothered whether the opposition only does the talking. The Uganda that the opposition is concerned about is the same Uganda the NRM is concerned about and the same Uganda that I as a human rights defender am concerned about. All I can say is that something is wrong and that is why we hear secession talks. The weakness of the opposition is no justification for the failure of the ruling party. As a human rights defender I have both a moral and legal obligation to demand accountability from the government that uses our taxes.
6. THAT MUHOOZI KEINERUGABA IS A PATRIOT:
The newspapers quoted the president as having said so. I fail to believe that Afande Muhoozi is not in a position of luxury. Is he not a commander of special forces having risen through the ranks at a supersonic speed? Don't we hear of classified budgets and expenditures in regard to the military? In the mail I was told that if I showed interest in joining the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) my application will be considered with the highest priority. Is it only in UPDF where my knowledge can ably be exploited? Why can't the president talk about appointing me as one of the directors in National Planning Authority, Uganda Revenue Authority or any other parastatals?
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