Uganda @54: Our youth have nothing to celebrate

In exactly one week from today, Uganda will mark the 54th anniversary of independence achieved on October 9, 1962, amid great expectations, pomp and pageantry. On that historic occasion I was a teenager and a student in Senior Two at Sir Samuel Baker School, Gulu, which was then the premier secondary school in the entire greater north.

I am sure for Ugandans who were witnesses to the dawn of uhuru, October 9 brings pleasant memories of joy and jubilation. We felt and believed that things could only get better and better and for a while they actually did, but alas those high hopes and wishes were short lived, as has sadly been the case with most African countries which, like Uganda, attained independence during the decade of African liberation from the yoke of colonialism, aka the roaring 1960s.

A tragic event which occurred a month ago in Kampala and was captured on video exemplifies the depths to which Uganda and many African countries have sunk since independence into the abyss of decadence, despair and desperation. Thank God, that event did not end in loss of yet another innocent life and the relatively happy ending of the tragedy was reported in a Daily Monitor story published on September 19 titled, ‘Suspected suicide victim discharged’.

According to the story, a 17-year-old young man called Mustapha Lule was discharged from Mulago hospital where he was admitted for treatment for three weeks following an attempt to commit suicide in broad daylight on September 3 by jumping down from the rooftop of Mabirizi Complex, a high-rise building in Kampala’s central business district.

What saved the young man from instant death was the fact that he fell on top of a motor vehicle parked outside the building and as a result he suffered minor injuries on his head and arms.

In an interview with a Daily Monitor reporter at the hospital, the teenager said he got depressed after losing a petty tailoring job which was his only source of income. He confessed that, “I have so many problems in my life that sometimes I regret why I was born!” How sad and tragic!

Instead of showing empathy with him, Uganda police had the audacity to arrest and detain Lule at Kampala’s CPS, allegedly for committing a misdemeanour! I hope he will be released soon.

What is disturbing and troubling for me is that Mustapha Lule is not alone! There are literally millions of young Ugandan men and women in Lule’s shoes out there who have lost hope in life and feel the only solution available to them is to call it quits and commit suicide.

Suicide is, in fact, now commonplace in northern Uganda where a major root cause is prolonged and forced internment in IDP camps coupled with inhuman and deplorable post-war living conditions.

Thousands of these desperate young men and women are fairly well educated, including university graduates who have failed to find gainful employment many years after graduation. It is a human tragedy which should worry and be of concern to all Ugandans of goodwill, but especially to the government of Uganda.

How and why has Uganda come to this miserable situation when we are regularly bombarded with rosy statistics given by arrogant politicians? These politicians have made a habit of deceiving Ugandans that great things are taking place in Uganda’s economic and financial sector which will soon propel Uganda to middle-income status by 2020, in barely four years’ time!

As I have warned before and will not tire of doing so, youth unemployment is a ticking time bomb which demands and deserves urgent attention by government which has an obligation to create real and well-paying jobs for the vibrant youth of Uganda who are the vast majority of the population of our beleaguered country.

It is not enough for politicians to tell our youth to look for jobs in the private sector. It is not enough to recruit our youth regularly into the army and police primarily to protect a decadent regime from the just wrath of wananchi whose plight is of no concern or consequence to the ruling class.

It is an insult to tell Ugandan youth to be job makers without capital when relatives of big men in government are routinely given lucrative jobs on silver platter. It is whom you know and where one comes from, not what you know or what you can produce which counts in Uganda. In contemporary Uganda most jobs, especially the good jobs, are only available to the well-connected. If the ticking time bomb were to explode, the fallout would be disastrous.

In my interactions with youth from the greater north, I have been dismayed by the sense of resignation in most of them, including many who are graduates. They have given up hope for a better tomorrow. For them there is no future in Uganda and as a result many are trying their luck elsewhere in places where the grass is not exactly greener, such as South Sudan, DR Congo, the Middle East and even the Central African Republic.

I believe that, given the necessary political will, sense of fair play and correct priorities, government can create sufficient jobs to employ most Ugandan youth who have been on the road for years searching for jobs!

Government of Uganda must surely translate that pertinent independence slogan, uhuru na kazi, into action for all Ugandans.

Mr Acemah is a political scientist, consultant and a retired career diplomat. [email protected]