By Vincent Nuwagaba
The NRM ten point programme that sold like a hot cake at the time Museveni captured power contained the following points; restoration of democracy; restoration of security; defending and consolidation of national unity and elimination of all forms of sectarianism; defending and consolidating national independence; building an independent, integrated and self-sustaining national economy; restoration and improvement of social services and rehabilitation of war ravaged areas; elimination of corruption and misuse of power; redressing errors that resulted into the dislocation of some sections of the population; cooperation with other African countries and adoption of an economic strategy of mixed economy.
The above is what I often refer to as the NRM blueprint. This blueprint was so good that no sane person could dare fail to support it and for this its architects were given a benefit of the doubt. Ironically, more than two decades in power, we hear the architects talk about the vision. It would be better if the NRM vision was embodied in the ten point programme. Accordingly, we are supposed to be preoccupied with the question as to whether or not the ten point programme has been actualised in the two decades the NRM has been in power. If not, we need to ask what went wrong.
To me and I think to many other Ugandans to reunify the country is our nation’s supreme task which brooks no further delay if I could use the words of Kim II Sung. We must accomplish the cause of national reunification as soon as possible, so as to meet the unanimous, ardent desire of the entire nation and hand down a reunified country to the generations to come. This we shall do by revisiting the NRM original blueprint.
There has been a radical departure from the ten point programme and this explains why I concur with Dr Kizza Besigye in his talk about the existence of two Ugandas; a Uganda where a small clique lives in glamour, affluence, pomp, pageantry and ostentation and a Uganda where the majority can barely access the basics of life; where people are dying of hunger yet others elsewhere suffer from indigestion; where higher education is an unattainable dream; where university graduates cannot dream of getting a job on merit yet people use forged documents to access plush jobs. In this Uganda we are seeing hopelessness, normlessness, voicelessness, vulnerability and frustration. Yet in the other Uganda, people are in paradise and enjoying heaven on earth. Accordingly, the call for revisiting the NRM blueprint especially point number seven which aimed to eliminate corruption and misuse of power is of paramount importance for it alone can ensure that all other points are realised.
In the President’s state of Nation address in 2009, he assured the nation that since the other wars including the war against LRA were over; his army was ready to tackle the war against corruption. He reiterated this in his independence speech that there is a young crop of the army that is ready to crackdown on corrupt officials. Some of his lieutenants were elated by the President’s new stance against corruption and as such General Elly Tumwine launched a parliamentary and Pan African pressure group to fight corruption. What continues to baffle me however is, why the President’s has continued to fail or deliberately refuse to put his money where his mouth is? While he convincingly tells us that he now has a renewed commitment to fight corruption, he continues dishing out patronage to his clients. For instance, recently he reportedly gave Uganda Shillings 1 billion to ex-legislators to boost their Sacco. He also gave a pickup vehicle to a Matoke farmer in Rakai district. How does the President account for the taxpayers’ money dished out without a properly laid out procedure? Doesn’t the President know that patronage is one of the worst forms of corruption?
I agree with the President that corruption is a cancer to our society that has to be fought tooth and nail. I also agree with all those that have written about the dangers of corruption. But I think what we ought to do now is to identify the cause and major forms of corruption. Short of that, I surely believe we are riding for a fall and fighting a losing battle since you cannot cure a disease whose cause you have not diagnosed lest we shall treat the symptoms.
While many Ugandans concentrate on embezzlement and abuse of public funds as the major form of corruption and some erroneously take it to be the only form of corruption that we need to fight, I believe we need to first handle the causes and other forms of corruption and embezzlement will ultimately be peter out.
We have many people without formal education yet they have counterfeit academic papers. These people don’t forge papers for the sake of it but they use them to get jobs. Why can’t the government open a battle on these people who use counterfeits if it genuinely wants to curb corruption? What would stop a person who used counterfeits to get a job from pilfering public funds? Another bunch of counterfeits that are difficult to crackdown are those that hire coursework mercenaries. Nonetheless, if government embraced meritocracy, this group would also be phased out because the mercenaries used are the brilliant holders of first class and second upper honours degrees who fail to get jobs because they lack godfathers either in the public or private sectors. So they opt to keep around the universities to make ends meet. This has made coursework and dissertation writing a booming activity in places such Wandegeya and Nakulabye and other places surrounding the universities. This vice is shockingly being practiced even by some Ugandans who are doing their graduate and undergraduate studies abroad for they email questions and also get coursework and dissertation online.
Ultimately, our country witnesses the inflation of academic papers without educated people because forging a degree transcript doesn’t mean you have got one. Likewise, hiring mercenaries to do coursework and write your dissertation only wins you papers but not the cherished degree because a degree is intrinsic in the person. It is not about the display of papers like the current mayor of Kampala did at one point in time as the rumours made their rounds that he bought the academic dress from Wandegeya.
We need to blindly penalise whoever is involved in corrupt practices regardless of what role they played in the “liberation struggle”. In fact those who played a role in the struggle deserve harsher penalties because they betray the cause for which they fought. We also need to properly allocate resources through priority setting. To a third world country, priorities should be education, health, roads, employment creation among others. These are the bread and butter issues that we must greatly be concerned with. For instance we must improve the civil servants salaries. Otherwise, how do you expect a member of parliament whose qualification is merely senior six equivalent to earn more than 10 million while a civil servant with a Master’s degree earns less than 500,000 shillings? What would forestall a civil servant from diverting funds for personal use if such is the status quo? The most practical solution to corruption is identifying the best brains, invest in their training, recruit them on meritocracy basis to steer our bureaucracies and pay them handsomely. Corruption will not be fought by bureaucrats who get jobs on patronage basis and will not be fought by presidential pronouncements such as let there be no corruption! We must see institutions such as National Planning Authority steered by people who can indeed plan and not those who plan to fail. We can only achieve this by doing away with patronage and/or clientelism in the appointments to offices. Mediocre public officials will invariably produce mediocre results like the IT experts say, garbage in garbage out. Ultimately, we need to provide incentives to the whistle blowers. Let’s exhort the President to revisit the NRM blueprint and make sure each one of us plays a role. For God and my country!
Vincent Nuwagaba is a human rights defender and can be reached via email at mpvessnuwagaba@gmail.com
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