Prof. Kagonyera, please honour your promise

By Vincent Nuwagaba

This Article was first published by Daily Monitor on Wednesday January 13 2010

In Summary

The first attribute was accordingly discipline, the second was discipline and the third was also discipline. I added another three attributes with the first being integrity, the second integrity and the third integrity.

While presiding over Makerere University graduation for his first time Prof. Mondo Kagonyera, the Chancellor, underscored three key attributes as being critical if the graduates were to be successful. The first attribute was accordingly discipline, the second was discipline and the third was also discipline. I added another three attributes with the first being integrity, the second integrity and the third integrity.

I am always mesmerised by the good professor’s sound advice. Meanwhile, the very professor who has always emphasised discipline is now under fire to resign from the university’s topmost titular position on account that his discipline has been found wanting. Indeed Kagonyera is himself the one who said publicly that should he be implicated by the Auditor General’s report, he would resign. Accordingly, MUASA, Makerere University Convocation and the Vice Chancellor Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba are only reminding the good professor to honour his promise.

I also write in my capacity as an alumnus and student of Makerere to ask Kagonyera to step down to guard the integrity of the university. I am not saying that Prof. Kagonyera is guilty but he is not spotlessly clean.

Sadly, in Uganda corruption, greed, selfishness and impunity have been elevated to norms rather than exceptions. As I urge Kagonyera to resign, I also call upon many of those who have been implicated in corruption scandals to show cause why they should continue to occupy public offices. I know many have not even appeared before tribunals and/or courts but when you look at what they own and make a flashback on how they were prior to 1986, you surely agree that although Uganda is gifted by nature, it is cursed by greed, selfishness, indecency, impunity and grand corruption.

The question then should be: do we suffer a dearth of clean people? No. Why then do hitherto clean people indulge in corruption when they capture office? The answer is simple. Concern about the country stopped on paper and public speeches shortly after the NRM capture of state power. Before he was sacked on air in 1998 or thereabout, my area MP exhibited some signs that he was working for the good of the nation and had not been taken too much by material possessions. I am sure the man later realised that as he was busy working for the nation, others were busy with self-aggrandisement. So he chose to dance to the similar tunes.

I have also realised, it is next to impossible to be clean in a situation where every other person is dirty but I can only say, sorry Kagonyera. That many others in public offices are abusing them with impunity is no justification for you, a professor who should be a paragon of virtue and excellence to follow suit. The position of the chancellor of Makerere is a sacrosanct position which deserves the holder to be spotlessly clean. After Kagonyera’s resignation, we shall be helped to push other corrupt people out of public offices.

Mr Nuwagaba is a human rights defender
mpvessynuwagaba@gmail.com