Turn wars on land against enemies, not peasants

To the President, leaders and people of Lango and Uganda. First of all, may I appreciate the effort you are making on the matters of reaching the people to inform, discuss and understand the people who trusted you with the leadership of Uganda. Being one of the people listening to Radio Unity on Tuesday, I wanted to put some question and advice to you on this land matter.

I was surprised that the radio programme officer decided to ring-fence the phone calls as if it was a monologue, which denied you a chance to learn more from the peasants about your land law campaign. I myself, who wanted to call, had no opportunity.
The programme officer disappointed many listeners by first of all allowing two unopposed questions and later ruled every other caller out by saying he was going to take only four additional callers. The radio talk show was your presidential business and not of the radio programme officer. What was the programme officer fearing? Was he fearing more truthful information from people of Lango? Whenever there are ordinary talk shows, more than 10 questions are asked.

So I believe that you have not yet accessed sufficient and truthful opinion of people from Lango. For that matter, let us draw a lesson from this omission to talk to the peasants, who do not have the chance to express their views directly to the head of State and make improvements for the future coming talk shows. Following your remarks: “There are lizards on the roof of public buildings, which are the ones holding government developments at ransom.”

When they overhear of pending projects and rush to buy land from peasant on strategic locations where developments are being planned and later use the land to demand colossal compensation.
You gave three examples - one from Kamwenge Road construction, who demanded Shs1.8 billion. The second one was from For Press And Media Publication.
You also mentioned Ntungamo power transmission line to Rwanda where one person demanded Shs1.5 billion, and the third was the Soroti-Lira high voltage power transmission line where a man only wanted power line to dodge his customary land where he never wanted any payment.

As far as I am concerned, these cases have nothing to do with the peasants and the peasants will suffer for nothing. People say “when two elephants fight, the grass will suffer.”
Why should Uganda people suffer in unison when you know the enemies of the people who are “the lizards? ”
Mr President, let us turn the wars out of the constitutional amendment of Article 26 to fighting of the lizards or corruption as you put it that “Kisanja Hakuna Mchezo.”
I think we do not need to amend Article 26 since you very well know the enemies, “the lizards”, whose fighting will not take you even one year. We can use the present national and international laws to fight these people - the lizards.

You can start by firing the corrupt leaders, technocrats, public officers and some of those who are very close to you. These are enemies of government (and not the peasants). Some of them are not doing much apart from appearing for talk shows.
You will be in a much better position if you prioritised the position of issuing heroic medals from other categories to those helping you to fight corruption through “Kisanja Hakuna Mchezo.” Wishing you the best of luck in Lango.
Thank for your attention.

Mr Odwe is a retired Deputy Inspector General of
Police and a senior consultant on security
and governance.