By CHANGE OF GUARDS
“It is true that there is corruption in UPDF. They should not claim that there is no corruption. Corruption has crept in, such as stealing fuel, mishandling money, and other mistakes. These mistakes are committed by a minority of individuals who are near the sources of these issues.” – Museveni, during the Tarehe Sita celebrations on February 26, 2024.
Close to two months now, Museveni has been purporting to tackle the scourge of corruption that has become the trademark of his regime. For starters, corruption in Uganda can be traced to his army right from the guerrilla war and to the government 40 years ago. The security sector always takes the lion’s share of the national budget. The so-called classified expenditures by the regime provide cover for the wanton swindling of public resources by some regime functionaries. The biggest corruption scandals the country has witnessed are linked to the security sector. Consequently, some individual players with links to the security sector have, over the years, accumulated such vast sums of wealth that they are among the wealthiest people in the country. As public servants, when the IGG wanted security personnel to declare their wealth, Museveni came out strongly to stop that move. He feared that Ugandans would get to know how some security players have looted the country clean. In the April 24, 2022, directive to the IGG, wrote:
“……. Therefore, the IGG, if it is his mandate to fight corruption in the defense forces as well, should work through CMI, and not directly. A similar arrangement should also be made for the Police and ESO.”
Therefore, it would have been prudent for Museveni to have started with the army in his current purported fight against corruption. Instead, the above statement was made to portray the then-army top leadership as incompetent. Indeed, shortly after, he sacked the then-figurehead army chief and replaced him with his son and Crown Prince, Gen. Muhoozi.
INFORMATION IS POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF UGANDA IS MUSEVENISM
Discussion about this post