Govt slashes budget for Oulanyah burial

The government has slashed the budget for the burial of former Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oulanyah by nearly 30 percent, citing removal of “unnecessary expenditure” in the initial allocation.

This publication exclusively published the original Shs2.5b budget yesterday, sparking animated public discourse and criticism of the government particularly on social media.

READ: Inside Shs2.5 billion budget for Oulanyah’s state burial

“As [the] ministry of Finance, we have been able to revise it (the budget) downwards from Shs2.4b to Shs1.8b. All the expenditures which can be done away with, [they] have been removed,” Mr Henry Musasizi, the state minister for Finance (in-charge of general duties), said. 

This means the budget has so far been cut by Shs700m, with a possibility of further reduction, two sources with working knowledge of the changes, said last evening.

In the original budget, whose figures were widely shared on social media, and run by FM radio stations, as well as online publications, following this newspaper’s exposé, the big-ticket expenditure items included burial day (Shs1.1b), A-Plus Funeral Management (Shs226m), Acholi Parliamentary Group (Shs313m), finance committee (Shs248.7m), security (Shs158.5m), and fuel (Shs124m). 

It remained unclear if the budget chop was prompted by our exposé, the criticism the revelation triggered, or both.

In a telephone interview yesterday, minister Musasizi, speaking after the State minister for planning, Mr Amos Lugoloobi, had tabled a statutory revision of the Parliament budget during a plenary sitting, said the revised budget for the burial of Oulanyah stands at Shs1.8b.

“And even these ones [figures] we have presented here are working figures of the budget within which the entire process will be conducted,” he said.

He added: “It is possible that certain items may fall out and get to the level where the budget is reduced further. The finer details would have been worked out.”

We were unable to establish the items affected by the budget cuts. 

Yesterday’s statement that Mr Lugoloobi presented to plenary was originally not on the Order Paper, but it was included because it sought a parliamentary approval to facilitate an emergency, according to the new Deputy Speaker, Mr Thomas Tayebwa, who chaired the House for the first time since his election last Friday.

President Museveni announced the death in the United States of the 56-year-old Oulanyah, the first Speaker of the 11th Parliament, on March 20, and his burial is scheduled for April 8 after the body arrives aboard Ethiopian Airlines plane this Friday.

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Before his interment in his home district of Omoro, a flurry of events including multiple vigils at his home, a state funeral at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds in Kampala have been planned. These will cost several millions of shillings.

But up until yesterday’s reporting by this publication, the details of these arrangements had been closely guarded by the committee.

Yesterday’s social media uproar following our exposé mirrors the protests organised by Ugandan Diaspora community outside the University of Washington Medical Centre in Seattle where Oulanyah was admitted for specialist care.

The demonstrations were sparked by revelations of now disputed Shs1.7b cost of airlifting the then Speaker to the US, with the protestors demanding he returns to Uganda where the government should improve health facilities and care.

In an address to journalists at Parliament after tabling the statutory budget revision, minister Lugoloobi described that the Oulanyah burial budget figures published by this newspaper yesterday were “a draft”.

“What I saw [is] probably they leaked information that wasn’t official, because when we are dealing with numbers, these numbers keep changing until when we come up with the final figures,” he said.

In a separate statement giving update on the movement of Oulanyah’s body, funeral programmes and actual burial, Presidency minister Milly Babalanda did not dispute the budget figures, but defended the allocations.

“What matters is not the figures, but the activities involved …,” she noted, asking Ugandans to appreciate that as the Speaker of Parliament, Oulanyah was the third highest ranked state official and deserves a “befitting send-off”.

The budget

A source familiar with the discussions told this newspaper last evening that the burial budget is likely to be slashed further to Shs1.2b.One possible item of price reduction is food. For instance, sources said that the Shs25,000 budgeted per plate of food was  an inflated price from Shs9,500.

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Asked where the money for Oulanyah’s burial will be mobilised from, minister Lugoloobi pointed to the consolidated fund. As the third in the national order of precedence, Oulanyah will be accorded a state funeral.

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