By THE OBSERVER UG
President Yoweri Museveni
President Yoweri Museveni has tasked the police to thoroughly investigate cases of corruption highlighted in the auditor general’s reports.
While addressing the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Liberation Day celebrations at the Wakitaka Church of Uganda grounds in Jinja city on Friday, Museveni said instead of waiting time in intensive inquiries by parliamentary committees and boardroom dialogues, the police’s investigating arms should take centre stage to bring the culprits to book.
His remarks come a few weeks after the auditor general report indicated that corruption was derailing available efforts of ensuring service delivery, coupled with ghost works, among other related evils. Museveni argues that corruption is an indication of political failure, which should be disassembled through legal means, instead of opting for systems, which were unable to deter graft before it happened.
Museveni notes that theft of public funds is a form of criminal behaviour, where prosecution procedures are undertaken and all responsible government agencies should be awakened to this fact.
“We can’t do whatever we want to do because the biggest problem we have is corruption. Recently, there was an audit by the auditor general which showed that there were many ghost workers being paid…I saw that the committee of parliament is going to I don’t know what. No. Once you’re a thief or a criminal, CID will move in and deal with them. If the auditor general has shown that then the next stage should be CID not political because political would have been bypassed by that time,” Museveni said.
As has been his norm lately, Museveni also accused countries of using their aid, loans and influence to induce third-world nations into bowing to their demands. Citing the example of Moses Simbwa, who used the Liberation Day celebrations platform to accuse some elements within the opposition of bribing him to parade torture claims against the government, Museveni says that, Uganda is built on strong systems that can’t be destroyed by saboteurs.
Simbwa claimed that he was involved in a motor accident before election time but the opposition politicians promised him a pay of Shs 1 million if he ‘falsely’ accused the government of torture before international media.
Simbwa says that he openly agreed to their dealings, however, following months of living in fear, he reached out to the NRM Liberation Day organizers, who offered him a platform to unravel the truth surrounding his situation.
Museveni further says that several intelligence reports have implicated opposition leaders in allying with Western countries to cripple Uganda’s economy and goodwill before the people, but there are plans of exposing them.
“Now what these young people were saying – Ssimbwa and the other one about the opposition, this one we know in the security system and at the right time we’re going to expose these bogus groups that they call opposition. They go talk with Europeans to see how to force Uganda to be a puppet of foreign interests. They have been doing it in other African countries and also some of the other third world countries but they don’t know how strong the NRM is. Some people announced; ‘we’re not going to give new loans, new money to Uganda.’ We’re moving forward, Uganda will grow at even a faster rate than before because the strength we built, we built it by ourselves. If you want to help you help, if you don’t want bye-bye,” Museveni said.
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