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Always laugh at people who think NRM can fight corruption

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Author: Musaazi Namiti. PHOTO/COURTESY

When President Museveni talks about fighting corruption in Uganda, as he did on June 6 while delivering the State-of-the-Nation-Address, sometimes you cannot help yawning. If you work with evidence and facts, you know he has barely delivered on that front. 

Let us begin from the simple premise that corruption in Uganda is never far away from the headlines. It is rampant; it is horrendous.

A study the Inspectorate of Government commissioned in 2021 revealed that Uganda loses at least Shs9.144 trillion to corruption every year. That is a fantastically large sum. If the NRM government and Mr Museveni were really serious about combating corruption, the country’s prisons would be teeming with people convicted of corruption-related crimes. 

But the truth is that few people in Uganda get jailed for high-level corruption. In fact, political leaders accused of serious corruption are now being punished by foreign governments such as the UK and the US. How can we have too many cases of corruption but few people jailed for corruption?

It is rare to find people in Uganda for whom life has become hell as a result of engaging in corruption. Many are living comfortably, leading opulent lifestyles they would only dream of if they were earning an honest livelihood.

When Mr Museveni addressed the issue of corruption during his State-of-the-Nation-Address, he sent conflicting signals. While he vowed to clamp down on the corrupt, he also denigrated individuals who are exposing corruption, accusing them of working with imperialists. 

A president who is really committed to fighting corruption cannot criticise individuals and newspapers working as his allies. Never. As a reader named Salongok Mkulu commented on Daily Monitor’s Facebook page: “The [Daily] Monitor is showing you [president] where things go wrong in your government so that you can correct them, but you take them as enemies. Monitor is talking about corruption, bribery, embezzlement, and all the wrongdoings in your [nearly] 40-year government.” 

Corruption in the NRM government can be traced back to the early 1990s. In December 1990, a man named Teddy Ssezi Cheeye, who was close to the NRM, launched a newsletter called Uganda Confidential and exposed high-level corruption in government departments for years. 

Few people went to prison, although Mr Cheeye, who died in 2018 and had made his name by exposing corruption, was himself jailed for six years for misappropriating funds at an NGO he founded named the Uganda Centre for Accountability. 

There has also been corruption in the army, where the President is the Commander-in-Chief. Retired Gen David Tinyefuza (now Sejusa) talks about it in a video clip I watched recently. 

In the video, Gen Sejusa says that many years ago, the government reduced the number of soldiers from 100,000 to 57,000. Everyone thought 57,000 was the actual number of soldiers in Uganda after retrenchment.  But when Gen Sejusa and others went around the country, visiting barracks after barracks, they discovered that 57,000 was a bogus figure. The actual number was 24,000. The rest — 33,000 — were ghost soldiers and had been paid salaries for many years. 

Not a single UPDF officer was jailed for this shocking corruption. Some officers who orchestrated this fraud have since retired and are leaving in comfortable retirement. If Mr Museveni is serious about corruption, why didn’t he jail the culprits?

And this is part of the reason why I say: Always laugh at people who think Museveni can fight corruption. It is easier said than done.

Musaazi Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk | [email protected]    @kazbuk