Barugahara, Nameere war on corruption timely

PDM’s rating went up as a result of the President’s involvement because his tour acted as an exhibition of the success stories, thereby debunking what detractors had been saying about the programmes’ potential to transform livelihoods.

Barugahara and Nameere have adopted the President’s approach in a way that sustains the momentum he created. Usually, when the President has concluded his tours, people relax or backslide to the old, bad practices, resultantly keeping the country in a cycle of back and forth without decisive action or complete mindset shift among the concerned. The gains are lost until the President goes on another round of tours, then officials pretend to be working or reformed, then they revert to the same practices when he leaves. Same pattern!

The ministers should be accorded the necessary support if they are to succeed in breaking the back of corruption and the poor performance monster that has captured the local governments and hampered Government’s plan to transform the grassroots. The aim of decentralisation for which these units were created has been endangered to a point where some voices are demanding that some of the units be scrapped and reintegrated into their mother districts. This is all because the promise of bringing services closer to the people has been badly affected by bad-hearted civil servants and political leaders that have turned districts and cities into their fiefdoms, where they act as they wish because they think that ‘Kampala is far’.

This isn’t to say that no work is being done. There has been improvement in many things, with Government fulfilling its mandate of providing budget support and other overheads, including security and policy guidance. Appreciation goes to all the co-operative, diligent and patriotic elected leaders and civil servants who are doing a good job and contributing to effective service delivery. In fact, while the bad ones are dealt with, the good ones should be considered for rewards.

Nevertheless, a lot more could be done if the centre and the local governments spoke the same language. The problem is of the “few” unpatriotic, incompetent and selfish people who are in office to fulfil personal ambitions at the expense of the taxpayer who meets the cost and the citizen who is denied services when money is stolen.

When they go to hospitals, there is no medicine or attention because the medical officers are absent; the roads are in appalling condition, in an era when PDM producers need to deliver their produce to the market; schools with ghost learners and shoddy works on classrooms. Even PDM money is still being stolen. Jobs are still being sold, and so on. This is the situation obtaining as Barugahara and Nameere dive into the assignment with gusto.

By the time of writing this article, the duo had been in Jinja, Mbale and Bulambuli, where they virtually left no stone unturned, visiting sites and getting stuck in muddy poorly done roads in places which are otherwise considered unreachable.

At least two chief administrative officers, engineers, and other categories of civil servants had been questioned, arrested, or suspended pending further investigations by the anti-corruption agencies, including the Inspector General of Government’s office and the State House Anti-Corruption Unit. The familiarisation tours have become sting operations exposing the underside of corruption and rot that has festered in the districts and cities, despite previous efforts to unearth them.

The sad reality on the ground is that these ills cannot be defeated in one swoop. They require sustained, co-ordinated, multi-agency effort and backup by officials deployed in the districts, like resident district commissioners, district internal security officers and even the elected leaders. Care should also be taken to act based on accurate information and not malicious allegations manufactured for malice and intrigue purposes or populist stunts.

What the two ministers are doing is the bare minimum expected of them as they take up the huge responsibility of superintending over the powerful docket that was allocated a large share of the budget for financial year 2026/27, amounting to sh8.214 trillion, including PDM funds, up from sh7.167 trillion in the financial year 2025/26.

This money must be followed to ensure that it serves the purpose for which it was appropriated and to help boost local revenue generation and transition citizens from subsistence into the formal money economy. On the other hand, as more Ugandans are mobilised and supported for production, the country is set to recoup its budget investment, which will translate into an expanded economy leading up to the proposed $500b threshold by 2040 through commercial agriculture, value addition (oil production, tourism and digital innovation).

But when the duo bottleneck of corruption and poor implementation of government programmes is not broken, this ambition is greatly imperilled, thereby dashing the collective hopes of all Ugandans. It must be made clear that there is nowhere in Uganda for the thieves to hide while causing so much damage.

The writer is the special presidential assistant — press and mobilisation/deputy press secretary at State House faruk.kirunda@statehouse.go.ug