Butambala for Museveni and Kigongo

____________________

OPINION

By Ahmed Kateregga Musaazi

On Thursday, April 24, 2025, Butambala District marked International Women’s Day. This was at Ng’ando sub-county headquarters. The chief guest was Hajjati Safiya Nalule Jjuuko, chairperson of Equal Opportunities Commission.

The organising committee that included offices of RDC, District Chairperson, CAO and the host sub-county, chose Hajjati Safiya Nalule, a former parliamentarian and now Chairperson of Equal Opportunities Commission, for a number of reasons.

She is a woman, a person with disability and an entrepreneur and an intellectual, among other things. If such a lady made it, thanks to affirmative action brought in by President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement Government, what about other women, old and young, educated and non-educated? She provided all the answers.

Hajjati Nalule thanked her parents for sending her to school despite her disability. She thanked more for affirmative action that helped her to study different courses, and she became a multipurpose leader, starting as a Kampala City Councillor representing people with disability and later an MP representing people with disability on an NRM ticket. She thanked the President for appointing her to the present position and the First Vice Chairperson of NRM, Al Hajj Moses Kigongo, for recommending her.

She called upon the women and any other disgruntled people to go to her offices and make a petition so that their concerns could be addressed. She promised to lobby for a seed school for Ngando sub-county, like St Luke Seed School under construction in Kibibi town council.

On my part, l emphasised gender which means men and which indicates that man cannot exist without a woman and woman cannot exist without a man and hence God created Adam and Eve and in Noah’s ark, God instructed that Noah selects a pair of people, animals, birds and insects of opposite sex.

l recalled the pre-colonial times where men and women may have been equal but not uniform, but each specialising in his/her area. Women were discouraged from being masculine, and men were equally discouraged. Then the colonial times that built a few girls' schools like Namagunga that produced leading women like Florence Lubega, one of the first legislators in the 1950s, then the post-independence brought in the likes of Ruhakana, Kalema, and Geraldine Namirembe Bitabamazire, a daughter of the soil in Butambala and former Minister of Education.

However, the fundamental change came in 1986, when one position from village to district levels was specially left for women, and another for youths, and then a district woman MP who brought in women leaders like Rebecca Kadaga, now First Deputy Prime Minister, Miria Matembe, and many others.

I commended President Museveni for recruiting women in the armed forces in 1979, which the UNLF Government disregarded and were discharged. However, in the five-year bush war, President Museveni recruited the likes of now Lt Gen. Proscovia Nalweyiso, and one of the beneficiaries is a daughter of Greater Mpigi Brig. Gen. Flavia Byekwaso, former spokesperson of UPDF.

I called upon people to go and check their names in the voters register that was on display and encouraged NRM people to participate in the elections of NRM structures and party primaries, but emphasised that leaders and candidates should be credible people.

Staff quarters at Gombe Hospital, under rehabilitation by the UPDF Engineering Brigade, are almost finished so is the construction of St Luke Seed School in Kibibi Town Council.

I assured people that money for social services and poverty alleviation programmes, and infrastructure development, if well used, will be increased and the impact will be great, and we have already requested President Museveni to have model villages in Butambala District, the way he has supported in Gomba and Ssembabule districts. Butambala is ever one of the pilot districts.

l reminded the people of Butambala District, Buganda Region and the whole of Uganda that the first National Chairman of NRM, Prof. Yusuf Kironde Lule, was a son of Butambala.

The First Chairman and Chairman of High Command is now President Yoweri Museveni. The Second Vice Chairperson and now First Vice Chairperson is Al hajji Moses Kigongo. Since Lule is no longer around, we should retain Yoweri Museveni and Moses Kigongo as a pair who should not be competed with as National Chairperson and First National Chairperson, respectively.

The Deputy RDC Yahaya Katunze Kavuma said that what the NRM Government has done in Butambala is visible, and what the people should do is to vote for President Museveni and NRM candidates and friendly forces other than NUP and other opposition candidates who sabotage government programs.

The Deputy CAO M/s Betty Nankindu, vowed to ensure the people of all walks of life benefit from government programmes and promised that a collective solution for the challenges will be found.

The Butambala District Women Council Chairperson, Hajjati Rehema Namuli, commended the NRM Government for programmes such as Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Programme, Youth Livelihood Programme, for the female youths, Special Enterprise Grant for older persons, and SAGE for senior citizens, PDM Grow for the women entrepreneurs, the National Special Grand with People with Disabilities, Uganda Climate Smart Agriculture and Emyooga.

She said that with UWEP, Butambala district has received so far sh215m, but only 20% has been recovered. She suggested that Grow Money should not be for only elite women, but ordinary ones, so that even those of Butambala can benefit.

So, Butambala, part of Luwero Triangle, and birth place of the first NRM Chairman Prof. Yusuf Lule and the present First National Vice Chairperson, Al Hajji Moses Kigongo, is for NRM and NRM only.