Ode to Corruption (Uganda’s Gravy Train)

We’ll prosecute; we’ll act/ We have Penal Code Act/ And Prevention of Corruption Act/ We’ll invoke Leadership Code Act/ Or Inspectorate of Government Act/ There’s a National Audit Act...

First Class degree you want?/ Just enter professor’s bedroom/ First ‘twas P7 examination/ Just showing corruption’s foundation.

Operation National ID card/ Are you a citizen so bad/ Don’t know ‘self you need a card?/ Billions spent is the word.

A road was to pass here/ But they drank it as beer/ The schools and clinic/ Are local chief’s picnic.

Want an LC letter?/ Give something greater/ If madam is better/ You get sooner than later.

LC doesn’t need a bicycle/ Maybe an Indian tricycle/ For Little Miss Matsiko/ Oh, that’s just nonsensical.

Touch him not!/ For fight you did not/ He sacrificed for revolution/ You agent of confusion.

My share of foreign aid/ Is school fees being paid/ Police will not raid/ With connections I have laid.

Kampala Road this way!/ Taxi tout shouts all the way/ Hundred more you’re fat and grey/ Making a difference his only way.

Come here and pick/ Your patient plus others weak/ This hospital is all but sick/ No doctors to make it tick.

Donations for the orphan/ Boss too is also one/ Father died in Ninety One/ Has no parents at Sixty One.

People are tired, so they say/ Expressing it in tweet, song and play/ Can’t have it another way/ When teargas so holds sway.

Won’t angels fear to tread/ In places of ghostly dead?/ Soldiers’ ranks with ghosts/ Teachers’ rolls of ghosts/ Pensioned oldies are ghosts/ Ghostly existence of the lost.

‘Bonna bagaggawale’, ‘bonna basome’/ ‘bonna bafune’, ‘nfunirawa?’/ Official lexicon’s gone native/ As if for your relative.

‘Bichupuli’, ‘wolokoso’, ‘kulembeka’, ‘bafere’/ Words once completely rare/ Language’s now accommodating/ The times are a’changing/ The country’s really going/ Where, oh Uganda, are you going?/ Where the gravy train’s blowing?

We’ll prosecute; we’ll act/ We have Penal Code Act/ And Prevention of Corruption Act/ We’ll invoke Leadership Code Act/ Or Inspectorate of Government Act/ There’s a National Audit Act/ Even Public Procurement Act/ Whistle Blower will be an Act/ Since there’s Budget Act/ What of Public Service Act/ Or Public Finance Act/ Lights, action, cut, run, act/ The gravy train’s parked/ Help us, Lord, stop this pact.