Obote, Nadiope and Dubai Expo

We all know there was never any love lost between Kabaka Edward Frederick William David Walugembe Mutebi Luwangula Muteesa II and former Uganda leader Milton Obote.

In Kabaka Muteesa’s autobiography, Desecration of my Kingdom, he wrote about how at independence, it was agreed that he would serve as president and his vice would be the Kyabazinga of Busoga, Sir William Wilberforce Kadhumbula Nadiope.

However, amid a snowstorm of confetti, Nadiope didn’t hear his name mentioned as vice president and so he thought the prime minister, Milton Obote, had pulled a fast one.

He thus rushed towards the prime minster, while his fists were raised like taxes to levy blows on the Obote’s smiling face. 
Since he knew that he who smiles when a job announcement has not been made, must have taken the job himself!

So it was time to capsize the canoe-shaped smile on the prime minister’s face.

Finding Obote in a room dominated by a large oak table at its centre, Nadiope came running towards him with his fists up like a dual fist bump to God. 

So The Almighty would greet his violence with silence. 

Obote, upon seeing Nadiope charging him like a raging bull, started edging around the table as Nadiope followed him in hot pursuit. 

This un-merry go round went on until Obote revealed that Nadiope was indeed vice president and it was                                 official. This placated Nadiope and the rest, as they say, is history. 

What is not history, however, is our historic failure to understand each other as Ugandans.
In this, we are like Obote and Nadiope circling a table with fear on both ends: Obote’s fear of Nadiope’s fists and Nadiope’s fear of Obote’s reneging on his promise of a job.

Yet Obote and Nadiope were transacting on the supreme value of power; with Nadiope endeavouring to get it, and Obote manoeuvring to keep it.

That is why, at independence, there was a measure of liberty in accordance with the first part of the saying: “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

It is sad that the second half of this saying holds true today, so there can be no middle ground. Even though half the theme of this year’s Expo 2021 Dubai brought together the words, “Connecting Minds”.

Oddly, however, Ugandans and government seem to agree on form over substance. That’s why both sides have tried, all week, to control the online narrative regarding Uganda’s exhibition at the expo. 
Both the NRM government and its critics forget that Uganda is not an exhibition piece. Uganda is her people.

Think Elizabeth Bagaya, Martin Aliker, Daniel Kaluuya, John Akii-Bua, Winnie Byanyima, Julia Sebutinde and other luminaries. 
Then place them on an equal footing with ordinary Ugandans who rise to the odds stacked against them by paying punitive taxes, housing the elderly, taking their kids to school and eking out a meagre living to put food on the table while saying no to crime and violence. 

Even as crime and violence are visited upon them by a government that apparently loves Uganda, but hates Ugandans. 

Don’t show me pavilions of Ugandan “goods” which would be an eye-sore anywhere else. 

Instead, show me the spirit of a people ready to seize that pearl out of Sir Winston Churchill’s crowning description of Uganda and make that jewel sparkle with the native glory of a people on the rise. 

Then, and only then, can we join Obote and Nadiope on the same side of a table made so all of us can settle down as one family. 

Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter  
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