Our government has a funny way of showing that it’s interested in sports

After the oil and gas sub-sector introduced us to the term spudding last week, Ugandan football has this week shoved the noun homologation down our throats. Whilst the gerund spudding brought an idiosyncratic feel, there was no such feel-good factor with homologation. 

Instantly recognisable as certain and prescriptive, the homologation or certification of the country's stadia by Caf—the African football governing body—returned a scorecard whose implications are sobering and must galvanise action.

Whereas Moses Magogo—the head of Uganda's football association since 2013–has exuded calm amid the squall, many Ugandans were at their wits' end after learning about the outcome of the homologation. Reading comments on social media, it is immediately obvious that many think this isn’t the time for half measures. They are right on the money. Yet their government will, as night follows day, use just the right mix of contrition and charm to gradually win back their hearts. 

The Sports minister, with an otherworldly air, has already opened the door ajar to show graders hard at work in Namboole. In so doing, Peter Ogwang has at once appeared pained and urgently expressive. Maybe, just maybe, the man running the rule over our sports docket is really concerned about the demands that have left Uganda in danger of a chastening experience. 

Probe deeper, though, and you will be able to clinch an argument about lightning striking twice. Eventually, you should be able to show  just how our government bears an uncanny resemblance to the French Bourbons. It learns nothing, and, heck, it forgets nothing.

As a country we cannot keep sidestepping—even side-stomping—our challenges. And yet that is precisely what we will keep doing. When Caf raised a red flag that saw the senior men's national team retreat to St Mary's Stadium in Kitende, this was supposed to be a wake-up call of sorts. The government led many to believe that the stopover in Kitende was a stopgap. Normal service would resume sooner rather than later.

Back then, many observers rightly hailed Lawrence Mulindwa—Magogo’s predecessor at Fufa—for spending his personal fortune to build a facility that gave the country a fallback position during the pandemic. Conventional wisdom suggested that the government would work in tandem with Mulindwa in augmenting St Mary's Stadium. After all, Caf had always maintained its scorn for the access roads to the stadium. 

Whilst sprucing up the roads was doubtless in public interest, the government continued to be impassive and resigned to the stadium's fate. When Caf's homologation process drilled the final nail in Uganda's coffin, few could say they didn’t see it coming. It was all down to inaction and disinterest. This is a drum that the government has been unapologetically beating for a protracted period. 

Lest we forget, Mulindwa was charged a princely sum in tax (believed to be north of Shs400 million, Magogo told NTV Uganda's flagship morning programme on Thursday) when he purchased the astroturf that was laid at St Mary’s Stadium.

If this government has sport's best interests at heart, it sure has a funny way of showing it. So maybe, just maybe, it is better that the Cranes play their remaining 2023 Africa Cup of Nations home qualifiers on foreign soil. To put it rather plaintively, we are on our own. Evidently. It can be stated with a degree of equanimity that our government has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

This column has been unequivocal about the rich rewards of responsible authorities being intentional about investment in sports infrastructure. Whereas it is your columnist's fervent hope that state actors will wake up and smell the coffee, I—purely out of an abundance of caution—choose to view the glass as half empty.