After selling off most of the government parastatals soon after it captured power in 1986 through the barrel of the gun, the NRM regime set about implementing President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s “This is not a mere change of guards; it is a fundamental change. We went through the latter part of the 1980s, 1990s, the first decade of the second millennium, the second decade of the second millennium, and are now at the beginning of the third decade of the second millennium with the national NRM in the saddles of power.

Much of the time, energy and money have been invested in politics, especially on entrenchment of one-man rule and power retention. It is no wonder that there has been so much abuse of human rights, the national budget and financial indiscipline with the passage of time. The obvious manifestation of power has been the acquisitive and over-consumptive culture of power at the expense of genuine development, transformation and progress of the country through genuine productivity of the economy.

Consumption supersedes production. This is reflected in the combined spiralling external and domestic public debt, reportedly standing at nearly 80 trillion Uganda Shillings, ever rising taxation, frequently multiple taxation. Taxation has become a tool of oppression rather than a means of providing services to the people of Uganda. The taxes are being used more to sustain unnecessary politically-oriented and justified ventures in all spheres of human endeavour. 

Therefore, while power thinks, believes and is convinced that Uganda and its people have benefited from the long reign of the NRM in terms of development, transformation and progress, the reality is rising abject poverty among urban and rural populations. This is despite the continuous infusion of money bonanzas into schemes that fail even before they stand, ending colossal sums of money being siphoned off into the pockets of unscrupulous government officials or politicians.

The national budget has become just a ritual, indicating upward allocations of money, but in reality, increasingly financial discipline is not reflected in performance and achievement of what it is allocated to do. The cost of government business is supersonically rising while the gains by the country are plummeting supersonically.

Continually, consumptive institutions such as the military and State House receive enormous volumes of money while comparatively essential areas such as education, health and agriculture are relegated into insignificance. For example, when it comes to supplementary budgets, which are also ritually requested by government, education, health and agriculture may not receive any supplementary allocations in any given financial year, but Security and State House will persistently, perpetually, consistently and perennially benefit.

For example, when we had to face Covid-19 pandemic, State House and security services received colossal sums of money, perhaps jointly far more than the ministry of health, as if they were at the forefront of combating the pandemic.

In Proscovia Nambatya’s 2020 article Uganda’s Covid 19 Supplementary Budget: Pandemic Response or Cash Bonanza?, the ministry of health received a supplementary budget of Ush104,188,234,110 ($27.6 million) while Security got Ush77,497,505,890 ($20.5 million) from the Finance Committee of Parliament. Security’s share was more than three-quarters of Ministry of Health’s share of the supplementary budget for Covid 19.

As Proscovia Nambatya correctly observed, the pandemic was a gateway for government expenditure to supersede budgeted sums. Otherwise, as Proscovia Nambatya notes, supplementary budgets have become larger and more frequent that the additional funds cannot always be justified and the most vivid indicator of financial indiscipline and improper and allocation and apparent misuse of public resources, often in unexplained and unjustifiable ways. The colossal financial bleeding of the country during Covid-19 was not commensurate with actual expenditures in combating the disease. What was no apparent was the mushrooming of petrol stations, guest houses, sky scrapers, hotels, supermarkets and mansions during the pandemic, when the economy was obviously badly hit. The financial indiscipline inherent in supplementary budget of November 2022 attracted concern and guidance of the Auditor General for budget makers and budget implementers.

Hopefully, the substantive minister for finance, President Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni both heard and listened to the official counsel of the Auditor-General. As Minister for Finance and de facto Governor of Bank of Uganda, the president is the overall political leader of the Ministry of Finance and of the Bank of Uganda. He presides over the budget-making process. He also approves or disapproves, politically, supplementary budgets. The economy of Uganda is squarely in his hands. Ultimately to borrow or not to borrow is greatly influenced by the President. Behind every problem is the problem of leadership.

There is no country that ever developed that underrated these areas in the budget. A good example of siphoning off money is seen in the area of road construction. Colossal sums of money are allocated to Kagina’s Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) at the end of every financial year and beginning of another. The Auditor General showed recently that the road projects that are allocated money in the national budget end up being reallocated to other programmes that were never budgeted for. This can explain why a road like the Kamuli Kaliro road in Busoga finds itself in the national budget every financial year for the last 20 or so years, each time receiving another budgetary allocation, but remains a marram road.

If this is not a case of financial indiscipline, then what is it? Where does the money go? How can we expect the government to fight misuse of taxpayers’ money if it allows such financial indiscipline to persist?

The struggle against financial indiscipline must be principally political but requires mindset regarding power and authority. It is unlikely that presidentialism (the involvement of the president in everything big and small, serious and unserious, augurs well for the efficient and effective management of the national budget.

First, we need the right people in the right positions, not wrong ones in the right positions. Kinship, ethnicity and nepotism erode professionalism. The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development as well as the Bank of Uganda should have professional people in positions of financial leadership and management.

Ultimately the consideration and passing of the national budget must not be done for political ends but for development, transformation and progress of Uganda and its diverse peoples. So far so bad.

Second, there is need for power to reconsider creating Ministries for the sake of creating jobs for political supporters and functionaries.

We must put the country first. A person who got a political office of running a ministry as a reward for political work is likely to be a burden rather than an asset. Each ministry requires effective leadership of the mostly technical and professional who are often uninterested in politics but in service and productivity. The politically appointed people, often evading interviews, are a drain and waste in a ministry. They had better be left to do other things and leave the effective technical and professional people to deliver for country and people. Otherwise, it would be wisdom to drastically reduce the number of ministries to a few that can be financially sustainably maintained.

Third, there is need to rethink security if we are to release money for development, transformation and progress. There has been loss of money every time a regime has left power because it spent money on security that ended up being deconstructed. Or else the big armouries it built using public money were destroyed by the incoming regime, or became obsolete with passage of time yet they cost colossal sums of money, which should have gone to education, health, agriculture and energy. Since independence we have spent heavily on arms and training of soldiers in anticipation of external wars as a result of aggression by others.

Unfortunately, we have ended up pointing guns at the very people who pay taxes that are used to acquire arms and train soldiers. In effect governments have spent heavily to defend themselves against the very people they are supposed to lead. Since we have waited for cross-border wars for decades and only ended up invading others, there is a lot of wisdom in spending more on the police for meaningful and effective internal security. If police can handle internal security effectively, then we would have no reason to spend heavily on military institutions to do internal security work, unless we want to build a politico-military state perpetually to occupy and rule the country.

Fourth, the government has begun talking of amalgamating some agencies, departments and institutions. That is a move in the right direction. After all the economy performed better in the past without the multiplicity of agencies, departments and institution. The majority have become channels for siphoning off money to causes that do not add value to the quality of country and people. In this case, fewer is better than many. For example, the Uganda Electricity Board of Erisa Kironde was far much more efficient and effective than the multiple small firms with highly avaricious managers and boards created by the NRM government.

Fifth, I don’t know how Uganda can now free itself from the cobweb of loans if it is to pay salaries or repay loans we have to borrow, simultaneously with building atomic energy capacity. Something is grossly wrong, not with Ugandans but the thinking of the leaders of Ugandans. If we begin to emphasize people instead of things, we shall open the gateway for right policies and practices to spur production rather than dependency.

A dependent country is in serious trouble of being owned by others. Uganda must be owned by Ugandans, not debtors who are becoming more and more unscrupulous to make money through lending to build their countries.

Lastly, rethinking is always better than thinking. There is need to rethink bigness. I have already called for a lean cabinet if what we want is economic development, transformation and progress rather than spiralling consumption. Simultaneously we must rethink big legislature, numerous constituencies, numerous districts and numerous cities, which are all consumptive, not productive.

Rethinking is not a sign of defeat or failure but a sign of new knowledge, wisdom, understanding and insight born out of experience, Experience is the best teacher. Twenty-first century Uganda must be productive.

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