Sorry, Mr President, Shs65b is very big money

Guideline: if you want cream from a government-funded project, court President Museveni and win his goodwill. That is, if you do not mind adding to his record as the ruler who has presided over the most corrupt regime in Uganda’s post-colonial history.

With revenue inflows failing to outpace the vampires, his regime is beginning to feel the pressure from taxpayers who are asking where the services are, and from government employees demanding better pay.
Regime apologists, who used to sing, “Do not politicise tax and procurement issues”, are now acknowledging that taxes and government expenditure are top political issues.

President Museveni sometimes seems to get it, and sometimes not to get it. He sometimes talks as if he values and respects taxpayers’ money, and sometimes as if he despises taxpayers’ money.

A report in the April 29 Sunday Monitor, ‘Museveni questions UMI courses as 2,700 Graduate’, shows something of this double-headed Museveni.
Apparently, Uganda Management Institute (UMI) wants to construct a multipurpose building at its main campus in the Kampala/Lugogo area. The cost: Shs65 billion.
The institute is planning to raise Shs10 billion on its own. Speaking at the April 27 graduation ceremony, the UMI bosses appealed for government support regarding the Shs55 billion deficit.

In response, President Museveni said of the Shs65 billion: “That is not big money.”
However, he had earlier reportedly called for a meeting with UMI leaders, during which, among other issues, he would “audit a bit what is being taught”, so that he could “see if the whole spectrum (was) covered”. And he now linked any commitment of government financing (for the said building) to that meeting.

Among the President’s remarks at the function: “I am not very familiar with procedures because I spent a lot of time where procedures are not very important. What I am definitely familiar with is management of business… How can a business be profitable? Why does Mr (John) Mitala (the head of Public Service and Secretary to Cabinet) outsource consultancy from outside? There must be a problem.”

Well, the buck stops… Unfortunately, the problem ultimately is Mr Museveni, the ‘visionary’ who is impatient with ‘procedures’, bringing (I suspect) his bush war command management instincts (and limitations) to the world of very sharp operators. And he has ended up with more thieves than patriots.

Apart from having general goal outlines, is the President an expert on higher education? I doubt.
Is he an accomplished quantity surveyor, architect, construction engineer, cost accountant and so many other experts all-in-one?

The President kind of wants any taxpayers’ money to the UMI building to be justifiable, but he is approaching the problem in his tested and discredited way, holding institutions and procedures in low regard.
If all the people involved in the UMI project were not as descent as the chancellor, Ms Namirembe Bitamazire, this would be the time to exploit Mr Museveni’s call for a meeting, manipulate him, make him forget other national obligations, and resell him his own two lines; that procedure is largely irrelevant, and Shs65 billion is not big money. Few would challenge his endorsement.

Now, I am a primitive man. I want to see this number, 65, as ‘bulk’. Remove all the chairs in a Pioneer bus. Cover the floor with Shs10,000 notes in one million shilling bundles. Then stack. The pile would cover a standing Museveni up to his shoulders; three quarters of the entire bus. Value: $18 million.
Mr President, even if properly spent, that is very big money in a small struggling economy.