PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni yesterday started a four-day inspection of farms and promotion of the Bonna Bagaggawale (Prosperity-for-All) programme in the southern region.
In Kooki in Rakai district, the President said the people could become as wealthy as top investor Mukwano if they embraced
Bonna Bagaggawale through commercial farming. The Mukwano Group owns multi-billion investments.
The President also visited the 20-acre matooke and cattle farm of Mr and Mrs Yassin Ntanda. He donated to the family a pick-up truck.
Earlier, Museveni’s security had advised him not to visit the farm because the 10km-road leading to it had become soggy after a downpour.
However, the President told the rally at Lwantulege trading centre: “If I could cross swampy areas in Bulemeezi (Luweero Triangle) during the liberation war, how can I mind mud?”
At another rally at Lwantulege in Kooki, Museveni said rural areas were not short of wealth but simply needed “re-awakening”.
Through intensive commercial farming, Museveni said, rural people could earn enough income to sustain their families. He said this was even more possible given the input of the national agricultural advisory services (NAADS).
Museveni added that some farmers had proved that it was possible to earn millions from a small piece of land.
He cited Mrs Kizza of Busense in Masaka who he said earns sh50m monthly from a three-acre piece of land on which she grows bananas, rears Friesian cattle, fish farming and horticulture.
“You can be rich. You need to comprehend this gospel of Bonna Bagaggawale.”
Museveni said the people had capital to invest but were misusing it in drinking. “I don’t drink and I have never understood why people drink. Why do you waste that money? Why don’t you bank it and accumulate capital for investment?” Museveni asked.
The President said the rural areas would be transformed once the people became thirsty for development and not alcohol. The Government, he said, would then step in to support their initiatives.
Kooki county chief Kamuswaga Apollo Sansa Kabumbuli II donated a cow to Museveni in appreciation of his effort to uplift the region.
The Rakai district chairman Vincent Semakula and the area MP, Maj. Mugumya Magulumaali, asked for electricity, computers for schools and the tarmacking of the Tantamuki-Lwambuggu-Lyantonde road.
“Kooki is an island without these,” Magulumaali commented.
In a reaction, Museveni promised both electricity and tarmac roads. “We shall extend power. It is not good for such good people of the Movement like you to be in darkness yet in Kampala where some don’t like me, it’s well lit.”
He said the tarmac would run from Lyantonde to Kyotera.
Chants of “Tajja Genda (he is here to stay) cut through the air as other speakers urged the President to stand for re-election in 2011.
