By Nelson Naturinda

IT is a pity leaders in Bushenyi want to tear it apart. There is no evidence that we will do better when we divide the district into smaller ones.

I have not seen any district that has developed because it has been divided. Most of the districts that deserved to be created were Kisoro, Kalangala, Busia, Kibaale because of language differences and geographical area.

Bushenyi leaders have failed to identify the development needs of Bushenyi and have instead focused on dividing it for their personal benefits.

That Bushenyi is endowed is real, with 916,400 people, it has enough market for its products, better than districts like Kalangala and Bulisa with 46,000 and 88,000 people respectively. We must exploit our big population for our benefit.

Bushenyi has gold in Buhweju, it is the leading producer of matooke, it produces milk in very large quantities and it has tea, cotton, fruits and honey. Our leaders should be focusing on developing these.

Bushenyi is one of the districts that send large numbers of students to universities, over 2,000 per year.

The incomes, the infrastructure and aids to trade must be boosted so that we do not look up to the Government to educate our children, but we do it ourselves. After all, even the 11 students chosen by Bushenyi on the quota system are not the neediest. Some are children of the district officials.

Bushenyi leaders should also start a development foundation, like the one Richard Kaijuka once started for Sheema, which later collapsed when he left. There is so much to promote, products which need value addition and projects that need investors.

Kaziko in Bugongi has been producing quality bricks, roofing tiles and other clay products since the 1960s. If they were empowered, got more investors in the business, they would compete with Kajjansi on the market, but they still produce at a very low scale.

Buhweju and Bunyaruguru produce fruits and instead of our leaders bringing investors in the fruit industry, they are discussing how big or how small the district should be. Bushenyi, despite being an agricultural district, with 88.7% of the people depending on agriculture, it has only one farm school.

At a rally in Bugongi in 2006, our leaders told the President how the place was wonderful, they told him we had power, piped water, good schools, good roads, banks and that we were gathered there to receive the President and only expected morale from him, nothing else.

First, the President came in a helicopter partly because Kabwohe–Bugongi road was and still is in bad shape; buses abandoned the road because of the collapsed Rwamuganga bridge. The other feeder roads are impassable hence farmers cannot transport their products.

There are very many unemployed youth. The people still depend on subsistence farming, and there is only one technical institute at Karera. Surely how could the people expect nothing from the man who had not visited them since he became President in 1986?

There is a silent notion that Catholics have dominated Bushenyi, because the district chairman is a Catholic. What a pity that such an issue should come from anybody in position of leadership. We voted them because they were capable and we should point out their mistakes, not their religions.

A call to divide the district did not come from the people, but from our leaders. They mobilised and bribed people to support a cause they may not even understand. Even those who ate rats to ask for a district did not know the benefit out of it, but the leaders knew.

The writer hails from Itendero, Bushenyi