Museveni's Honorary Degree A Mockery

Makerere University

Makerere University is set to honour president Museveni with an honorary PhD in recognition of his “distinguished and outstanding public service as an eminent statesman.” There is an adage which states that “a statesman looks at the next generation while a politician looks at the next election.” Accordingly, a statesman builds for the future as the Makerere University motto states.  

On the basis of this adage, I highly doubt whether Uganda’s president is a statesman. In my view, Mr. Museveni is a typical Machiavellian politician. In 1987 during the currency reform, each person that took money for changing lost thirty percent of that money. The government immediately embarked on the unholy Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). Thereafter, Museveni embarked on divestiture of our parastatals, marketing boards, cooperative unions and Uganda Hotels. This was followed by the sale or giveaway of our banks including those that were making huge profits. The NRM government then embarked on giving away public land and this was followed by directly fleecing of the public as was with the case of Concern for Orphans, Widows and the Elderly (COWE). Accordingly, whoever awards Museveni for his superb performance is deluding himself. A statesman builds for the future and doesn’t mortgage his nation. 

What does it take for a leader to build for the future? 

A leader can build for the future if they made education available, affordable, and accessible to both the rich and the poor. A distinguished, outstanding and eminent statesman fights corruption root and branch. This then ensures that money to equip hospitals with drugs is available; money to pay our medical workers handsomely is available; to build industries and factories, to create jobs for the unemployed is available. I surely wouldn’t honour Museveni as an eminent statesman. Today Museveni’s fight against corruption is cosmetic as it is discriminatory. He at one time said, he has come a long way with Mbabazi and Otafiire and that is why he defends them whenever the duo are in a hot soup.  

Museveni has presided over failed state institutions and has done nothing to forestall this. In fact, he is squarely responsible for dysfunctional state institutions. I know the award is being given to him for opportunistic reasons expecting that the president will now fund the university.  This surely casts doubt on the credibility of our university with Professor Venancius Baryamureba as the vice chancellor. We ought to note that it is the obligation of the state to adequately fund its institutions. 

It is ironical that Makerere University is awarding the president at a time when university dons have been turned into paupers and they hardly can sponsor their children in a university where they teach. This is the genesis of Professor Baryamureba’s mistakes and I hope it becomes the last. Professor Baryamureba has once threatened to expel students who participate in strikes as if he doesn’t know that it is a form of exercising their rights. 

As an alumnus of Makerere University, I am deeply touched that our honorary degrees can be awarded anyhow. An honorary degree should be a prestigious award given to people that have been exemplary not for just boosting people’s curriculum vitae. If it was to be awarded to a leader such as Paul Kagame who has moved his country from scratch to strength, it would be understandable. Possibly, Museveni would learn from Kagame’s award and change from his transactional leadership style to transformational leadership.  

During Museveni’s tenure as Uganda’s president, it is rare to give jobs on merit. What works is the spoils system typical of his patronage and clientelism. Today, higher education is a preserve of the rich. The few peasants’ children who by accident attain higher education are condemned to eternal unemployment because jobs are given to children whose parents fought, the cronies and relatives of the powers that be and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) cadres most of whom forge academic credentials from Nasser Road.  

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To have a smile on teachers’ faces, the least paid deserves Sh1.5m monthly

Vincent Nuwagaba

I was compassionately touched by Gastone Zehireyo’s letter in the press titled, “Teacher makes accountability of family earning, appeals for help” (Saturday Monitor October 21, 2011). Let’s critically analyse the letter and offer durable solutions. The letter doesn’t fully give a grim reality of the plight of the teachers. Rather, it points out just a tip of the iceberg. Unlike some other teachers whose spouses don’t earn a penny, Mr Zehireyo’s wife supplements his meagre income. Luckily, Zehireyo’s wife is not a demanding wife; otherwise she would want her hair plaited every week which would cost him not less than Sh80,000 a month. That Zehireyo can use only Sh1,000 on airtime shows the highest degree of patriotism and frugality. Zehireyo is less burdened given that he has only four children and doesn’t have other dependants – his siblings, parents and/ or other relatives. I know of teachers in my home county Ruhinda who carry the burden of the whole of their extended families yet they earn Sh250,000.
Not long ago, Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Kahinda Otafiire while on the KFM Hot Seat praised Government for UPE and USE. When in a text message I challenged him to prove whether genuinely we have UPE and USE given that Government remits a paltry Sh41,000 and less than Sh2,000 for each USE student and UPE pupil respectively, Gen Otafiire said, “Let that gentleman take his children to private schools if he has money; UPE and USE are for the poor”. How absurd! Is that justice? Virtually all current Ugandan leaders had humble beginnings but attended good schools because then, ones mental faculties determined which school they could join. Today, there’s de facto apartheid in our education system with the topnotch schools reserved for the children of the politicians, corrupt civil servants and first-rate businessmen some of who do business with government and rarely pay taxes thanks to the Spoils System. Today, ones mental faculty neither determines which programme they will pursue in the university nor which job one gets after university. Uganda is sinking into the doldrums of mediocrity and Government has sadly turned cavalier. Teachers want their children to study medicine, engineering, pharmacy, law, architecture, inter alia – lucrative careers. Accordingly, since quality education has become a commercial commodity to be purchased with money, teachers deserve adequate remuneration to purchase quality education for their children and dependants. Teachers’ children shouldn’t be condemned to the gutters.
I grew up in Bushenyi seeing teachers as the local elites raising admirable families and their children studied from St Mukasa Preparatory Seminary Mushanga, Kashozi Primary School, Kitabi Seminary, Bweranyangi Girls and other topnotch schools. Absurdly, today teachers’ children study from UPE and USE schools which Otafiire rightly said are for the poor. Our teachers are impoverished and ultimately, some teachers’ children will most likely fail to qualify to be teachers.
Appallingly, today teachers have no money for medical treatment! Surely, if teachers were paid a living wage, Cecilia Nambozo who recently died in a labour ward in Mbale Regional Referral Hospital would raise Sh300,000 to save her life.
That teachers’ children use kerosene lamps while reading is hazardous to their eyes but also inhaling kerosene smoke renders them susceptible to lung cancer. Government should give teachers solar energy. Does prosperity for all which entails health, wealth and education for all benefit teachers who cannot afford healthcare services and university tuition fees for their children? Zehireyo’s letter further reveals the grim reality that teachers’ children are malnourished. His children don’t take milk or millet porridge not because they are not necessary but because they cannot afford them. This will miserably dwindle their mental development hence affecting their academic performance.
I am sure if Uganda’s prime minister lost 500,000 – an amount teachers initially demanded, most likely he will not realise that he lost money. If we want a smile on our teachers’ faces and results from them, the least paid must in the short-term earn a monthly living wage of not less than Sh1.5m and all workers’ wages must increase commensurately with inflation and costs of living. This calls for fiscal discipline and strenuous fight against corruption. Otherwise, our society has enough to satisfy our needs but not enough to satisfy all our greed. Alternatively, the government should harmonise emoluments for all public servants on the basis of academic qualifications, output and experience. Uganda ratified the ILO Convention 100 (Equal Remuneration Convention) on 2nd June 2005. Accordingly, the government is enjoined to respect its treaty obligations in line with the principle of Pacta Sunt Servanda in Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Mr Nuwagaba is a human rights defender
mpvessynuwagaba@gmail.com

How universal is USE?

Vincent Nuwagaba

President Museveni promised to introduce Universal Secondary Education (USE) during the 2001 campaigns. His initial promise was that USE would begin in 2003. However, it was promised again during the 2006 campaigns as he faced his stiffest challenger Dr Kizza Besigye for the second time. In 2007, “USE” began albeit without proper preparation by the government.
If one hears the term, they think, it is secondary education for all. This however, is a fallacy. Recently, I took time to interview staff and parents of Kigarama Secondary School in Bitereko Sub County, Mitooma District about USE. The findings are appalling!
Kigarama SS is a government-aided school implementing USE. It has 28 staff members comprising 18 teachers and 10 non-teaching staff. None of the support staff is on the government payroll and only 9 of the 18 teaching staff members are on government payroll. I was told the school should ordinarily have a laboratory attendant, librarian, matron, nurse, messenger, security guards, cooks, store keeper and at least two secretaries. The school has one secretary, one storekeeper, one laboratory assistant and one librarian all of whom are paid by the parents.
What I found revealing is that the government disburses a paltry Shs 41,000 on each USE student. Yet feeding alone, if a meal is estimated at Shs 1000 costs Shs 65,000 for thirteen weeks in a term. Both the teachers and parents confirm that government reimbursement is less than 10% of the school’s basic needs per term. In fact, some schools have withdrawn from USE and many others had applied for withdrawal but the government refused because the number of the applicants was enormous. While the government occasionally gives boom for laboratory equipment (which it only did last year worth 4m) – the school spends so much on laboratory equipment – 10 million at a minimum annually this is only when the school does fewer practicals otherwise the school spends Shs 15m annually.
As for the salaries, the school pays 3.2m monthly to staff members that are not on the government payroll. Since USE started in 2007, it is only in 2010 that the school got a textbook and laboratory equipment boom of 7m and 4m respectively. This raises a question as to whether or not this government works in the interest of the masses. This is a party which says is a mass party.
The non-USE schools are often granted huge sums of money from the government budgetary allocations. The reason given is that the people dividing the national cake are products of such topnotch schools. The solution to that should be for the down-trodden schools to demand for affirmative action in the allocation of jobs to their alumni. Shockingly, the school has less than five alumni positioned in influential government departments and most of those there are underdogs.
As for textbook, I was told that government gave textbook boom worth Shs 7million to the school only in 2010 yet the school spends 12 million annually on textbooks. The school also spends on sports – taking students for interschool matches, uniform, coaches, etc. Term one has sports gala while term two has athletics. The annual school vote for sports alone is Sh 4million.
In all, the school I was told, spends 120,000/= on each student yet students pay Shs 70,000 and government remits only Shillings 41,000 per student. This means the school operates in losses. Thus, one wonders, how universal is USE if government cannot remit enough funds for the education of the students under the scheme? Before government embarks on Universal Advanced Level Education, let it first implement UPE and USE. As of now what the government pays for UPE and USE pupils and students is negligible and any parent who doesn’t have money at all cannot have their children in school – the availability of UPE and USE notwithstanding. What is long overdue, however, is the university students’ loan scheme.
Mr Nuwagaba is a human rights defender
vnuwagaba@gmail.com

NRM using UPE and USE to mock Ugandans

By Vincent Nuwagaba


First published by 256news.com on 18 June 2011.

Uganda is an interesting country. Interesting in a sense that many Ugandans are docile and have chosen to adopt an I don’t care attitude even when they pay taxes through the nose. They have chosen to leave Museveni and his cronies mismanage their country. The political leaders who ordinarily are supposed to be servants have turned themselves into masters and the other citizens who ordinarily are supposed to be masters have been turned into subjects.

One of the reasons why I like my area MP Maj. Gen Kahinda Otafire is because he has no pretence. He tells exactly what is on the ground. On the popular KFM Hot-seat hosted by Charles Mwanguhya, I listened to Otafire sing praises for the NRM regime over Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE). Through the host, I informed the General that government remits less than Shs 2000 for each pupil under UPE and that parents top up not less than Shs 10,000 and that government again remits a paltry Shs 41,000 for a student under USE and I added, this is foolery. In response, Gen Otafire said, “If that gentleman has money, let him take his children to private schools”. He said, UPE and USE were introduced to help those who cannot afford. The General further said, there was a time when government didn’t pay a penny for USE and UPE crowning his argument with the common cliché “half a loaf is better than none at all”.

First, for the information of Otafire and his ilk, Obote II regime used to give free exercise and textbooks, pens, pencils, mathematical sets and chalk all of them labeled “Property of the Government of Uganda, Not for Sale”. All we have seen with the current regime is mere lip service to the education sector – be it primary education, secondary education or higher education.

When the host asked him whether they were not creating an aristocracy, he asked whether the Queen takes her children to the same schools with the commoners. This is exactly why I like Otafire. If UPE and USE work, let the ministers take their children to the UPE and USE schools. Otherwise the truth of the matter is UPE and UPE schemes are Bona bakone. True, Ugandans have become intellectually stunted with UPE and USE. In fact, a senior lecturer in one of Ugandan universities said, University students cannot express themselves in English.

As we moan and groan UPE and USE, it has emerged that Primary Teachers Colleges have been closed because the government has not disbursed operational funds to these colleges. Who are the losers? Ordinary Ugandans. Why is the money to sponsor students on the statehouse scholarship scheme always available? Who qualifies for the statehouse scholarship scheme? If Ugandans don’t wake up from their slumber and demand what rightfully belongs to them, then we are destined for doom.

Why, in a multiparty dispensation, should one party use taxpayers’ money to build capacity for the political party cadres through statehouse scholarship schemes? To make matters worse, not all NRM card-holding members have access to such opportunities. Ultimately, you find that the beneficiaries are from the same party, same region, same ethnic group and sometimes same district or same clan. I am quite sure that speaking about these issues raises many people’s body hairs but as the Anglican Common Book of Prayer says, we are enjoined to constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice and patiently suffer for the truths’ sake.

The right to education is enshrined in Article 30 of the 1995 Uganda constitution. But also the international human rights instruments that Uganda has ratified stress the right to education and emphasise that higher education shall be accessible on the basis of merit. These include inter alia Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), Articles 28 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989), Article 10 of the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979), Articles 1, 2 and 5 of the International Covenant on Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination, 1969) and UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in Education.

It is understood that the international human rights instruments stipulate that elementary education shall be free and higher education accessible on the basis of merit. Today, merit doesn’t work. Museveni is building a plutocracy other than a democracy. With UPE and USE, the NRM is simply mocking Ugandans.

Meanwhile, I have learnt that after failing to exterminate me physically through all the dirty tricks they have used against me in the past since 2008, the NRM is determined to frustrate me by even denying me employment opportunities including in the private sector. But I have told them that if that happens, I will go to the village, start a retail shop, start a community-based organisation and study properly the problems the people on the grassroots suffer. This will actually broaden my relevance because I will step into the people’s shoes and under no circumstances shall I be gagged. Whether I am in Kampala or upcountry, I will continue speaking and writing. The most precious asset I have is my conscience and I state without any fear of contradiction that I would rather die than divorce my conscience.

vnuwagaba@gmail.com

An Open letter to Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament

Vincent Nuwagaba

Honourable Speaker,

I have had several conversations with Honourable Rose Sseninde, the Chairperson of the Social Service Committee of Parliament in regard to Makerere University student’s petition for which you wrote to me on the 4th November 2009 acknowledging receipt but also saying by copy of the letter, the chairperson of the Social Services Committee is requested to present the petition.

Honourable Speaker, on occasions I have talked to the Chairperson I have been told a similar petition was presented and parliament resolved that it had no powers to restrain the university council to rescind its decision on fees hike since the university council was mandated by the Universities and Tertiary Institutions Act to set the university fees. And that she would look a fool to present a petition whose material facts are similar to the one on which decision has already been made. I was left convinced that maybe if we are to trust Parliament, we are ploughing the sands. I will not labour to articulate the concerns raised therein since your office has a copy of the petition but I will raise a few issues in regard to my conversations with Honourable Sseninde.

I’ve told Honourable Sseninde that shouldn’t this matter be handled expeditiously, parliament should expect an unprecedented strike by students and lecturers because lecturers pay fees for their children hence fees hike should translate into proportionate hike in their remunerations. Of course MPs have already hiked their emoluments in the wake of increased costs of living which include paying fees! She told me whoever strikes will be expelled and I said should they expel us for exercising our rights, we shall sue the university and the consequences would be grave. I am sure you know there is a precedent.

Although I have not looked at the petition that was reportedly dismissed by Parliament, I strongly believe the issues may be related but the prayers are different. Our petition doesn’t in anyway fault the university council but asks the government to increase funding to the public universities and reverse the already passed fees increment so that students top on the fees due to them next semester.
This petition is also different from the other one in a sense that while the quashed petition came from the Students’ Guild leaders, this one is from the direct victims themselves – the freshers. It is prudent you take this one more seriously since it is he who wears the shoe that knows how much it pinches.

Honourable Speaker, we know that Parliament is the legitimate and institutionalized mouthpiece of Ugandans. Hence, we were not redundant to bring the petition to Parliament and we feel shocked to learn that you have no powers over the running of public universities. Otherwise we would have petitioned the Constitutional Court or the Uganda Human Rights Commission since we know that education is a right provided for in Article 30 of the constitution and other international human rights instruments ratified by Uganda. Please, note also the international law principle of Pacta Sunt Servanda in article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties namely that, treaties and instruments once signed must be observed.
This issue requires political not legal solutions. Otherwise, many MPs and the ruling party will be paid in a similar currency come 2011. H.E Mkapa said in his lecture at Makerere University that fees increment is counterproductive and governments in Africa must design student loan programmes. Food for thought. As we build for the future!

Mr. Nuwagaba is a human rights defender.
Cell: +256772843552 email: mpvessynuwagaba@gmail.com