Vincent Nuwagaba
Posted on July 7, 2009
I read with shock the news in the press that Uganda Revenue Authority is ranked the most corrupt tax body in East Africa by Transparency International. This revelation comes with the tax body headed by a professed “born again” Christian who ostensibly was appointed because it was felt the Pentecostals cannot be corrupt. There is a myriad of causes for the reported corruption in the tax body which range from the fact that corruption has reached acceptable levels in Uganda and the corrupt are hailed as smart to greed, unemployment and the manner of recruitment. I know of people employed in URA on the basis of their family backgrounds. Accordingly, nothing stops such people from pilfering taxpayers’ money because they know that since they have strong family backgrounds and they are well-known by the powers that be it would not be easy to push them out. But also some observers feel that it is possible that such people are employed in such an organisation so that they can eat big and it would not be easy for them to eat big if they stopped at their salaries which although are high compared to the mainstream civil service salaries are still not enough to enable one to easily and quickly takeoff.
That said though, I am not daft to assert that whoever has a job in Uganda Revenue Authority never went there through a transparent process. Indeed I know many young men and women who were recruited last year purely on the basis of merit. Unfortunately, our society is funny. People who get jobs dubiously and fraudulently constitute the biggest percentage of those who pilfer state resources. Like I have argued before that corruption begets corruption, such people feel insecure and they want to accumulate as fast as they can for they are not sure of what the morrow may look like. Accordingly, it is my contention that those who pass through the backdoors will do whatever it takes to primitively accumulate wealth. This they do at the expense of the tax payer and the poorest of the poor Ugandans for whose benefit taxes are collected.
Although it is my considered and informed opinion that those hired fraudulently or on patronage basis are highly amenable and susceptible to corruption, I believe that those who get jobs on merit do also pilfer taxpayers’ money because they work with the fraudsters. For instance, if you dipped a small end of paper into paraffin, the paraffin will climb and affect the whole paper. The Banyankole have two related sayings that embuzi mbi ahu eri tosibikaho yawe and owaiba ahekiire aba nayorekyerera literally meaning that where an indisciplined goat is tethered you cannot tether yours lest yours also learns from the other one and that he who steals while carrying a baby on the back is showing to the baby that it is normal and acceptable to steal. We have thrown morals into the dustbins and we hail and glamourise the corrupt as smart. But also, because of unemployment and its concomitant twin poverty, some will steal so as to raise some money that is fairly enough to cater for their unemployed and poverty-stricken relatives and friends. Accordingly, it is impossible to de-link corruption from unemployment. I have argued before that even if ones salary is 28 million Uganda shillings, if he/she has fifty unemployed relatives and friends, it will be difficult for such a person to make visible progress.
The corruption levels in the URA also show that it is not necessarily the “born again” who have the wherewithal to fight corruption. In any case, being born again is a biblical concept and therefore not exclusive to any particular Christian denomination. One can be born again when he/she is a Catholic, Anglican or Pentecostal. Some people may even get worried that their taxes are likely to be used in the promotion of Nyekundire group activities in which Ms Allen Kagina and Willis Bashaasha and some other URA officials are members. I wish these concerns could be crucially taken into account.
Vincent Nuwagaba
Human rights defender
vnuwagaba@gmail.com
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