It is true. The most inefficient and most ineffective “worker” in Uganda today is the central government. It has centralised power, authority and resources. It continues to pretend that it can discharge public services and hold resources in trust for the citizens of Uganda.

What it has managed to do instead is to allow the president of Uganda, who says he works for himself, family and grandchildren, to have all the sovereign power over everything. It is the president who decides whether or not Jinja-Kampala Road, which has become a principal killer road, to be or not be made passable.

It is the President to decide whether local government authorities should have money to manifest as essential, functioning pillars of government. He is the perennial substantive minister for finance. He decided that all the money that local authorities make first goes to the centre before being rerouted back to them to provide public services.

Unfortunately, they spend more of the 24 hours per day waiting for money to come from the centre than providing public services. This explains why Busoga’s Jinja City continues to be known more for the accumulation of rubbish – even on roads – and why schools and hospitals are decaying and collapsing: no genuine central government commitment to social development.

Don’t ask me where all the money is going. If you ask me I will tell you that it is not going to effective planning for Uganda and its people – present and future.

Ask me “Which Way Uganda?” and I will tell you that salvation lies in replacing centralised government with federal government. Ugandans wanted the latter but we’re gravely let down by people who wanted everything to themselves.

Central government, which was once a trusted institution, has become the means to dispossess, displace and deny Ugandans freedom and democracy and in contradiction of Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda.

For God and My country

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Makerere University, Uganda