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No more sleeping on our education
And those of us with an education, we consider worth talking about, should put it to much better use so we do not occupy the President of the entire country as a teacher of civics as he was that day, or basic economics as he does whenever he tells us about the Parish Development Model and how obviously sensible it is as…
Simon Kaheru. (File photo)
By: Admin ., Journalist @New Vision
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OPINION
By Simon Kaheru
In his speech to the nation on Budget Day this year, President Yoweri Museveni drummed home the ‘Term No More Sleep’ agenda with a challenge to his fellow Ugandans that sounded like a lesson in basic civics.
Unfortunately, we need those lessons — lessons that I recall from days when I was seated in a Primary Five classroom back in 1984 and being made to also recite names of capital cities from across the world. Civics was a short-lived topic back then. I enjoyed it thoroughly, which probably explains why I do some of the things I do today.
Our education system does not focus enough on this, as evidenced by too many of our public conversations and our behaviour in general as citizens who claim we want better.
The challenges the President threw down were mostly for leaders who he instructed not to go back into the slumber of past decades. He questioned why a health centre should lack medicines in the presence of a raft of ‘leaders’ from local council levels all the way to Parliament.
That simple example was to represent everything else in our lives — and not ending at the tables of our leaders; we, the citizenry, have a job to do ensuring that these leaders do the work we appointed them (in some cases, through the President we elected) to do and pay them for.
In my case, I have the number(s) of my Member of Parliament — just as I do my police station(s) and the LC1, LC2 and LC3 chairpersons and a couple of other officials where I live.
I have lugezi-gezi. Or, better put, I like to Be Serious about many of these things.
Our education system does not focus enough on this, as evidenced by too many of our public conversations and our behaviour in general as citizens who claim we want better.
The challenges the President threw down were mostly for leaders who he instructed not to go back into the slumber of past decades. He questioned why a health centre should lack medicines in the presence of a raft of ‘leaders’ from local council levels all the way to Parliament.
That simple example was to represent everything else in our lives — and not ending at the tables of our leaders; we, the citizenry, have a job to do ensuring that these leaders do the work we appointed them (in some cases, through the President we elected) to do and pay them for.
In my case, I have the number(s) of my Member of Parliament — just as I do my police station(s) and the LC1, LC2 and LC3 chairpersons and a couple of other officials where I live.
I have lugezi-gezi. Or, better put, I like to Be Serious about many of these things.
There are people who, on hearing suspicious sounds at their windows in the thick of the night, pick up their mobile phones and send WhatsApp text messages to their family groups.
There are others who, when in the same situation, dial the police station hotline or the officer-in-charge at their station and summon assistance.
Among those are the ones who, if that assistance does not arrive on time and they still live to see the next day, mobilise the neighbourhood for a security meeting at which the Police officers are held to account and made to do their jobs with more diligence.
While the President was speaking on budget day, I went to the Parliament website to confirm that the numbers of all the Members of Parliament had been uploaded.
The site is parliament.go.ug and has been active for many years now.
Not many people know that their representatives in the House are required to make their contacts public for purposes of consultation.
Even people who went to institutions of learning through to university level sometimes have no clue about how this is supposed to work. Sadly for our national management, too many of us believe debating in private WhatsApp forums amongst ourselves on issues that sometimes include countries like Iran will make a major difference to the state of affairs where we live.
It rarely does.
Instead, after a highly intellectual debate about statements by the US secretary of war, then climate change and then the trial of a seemingly deranged child killer, some of us have to deal with ways of sending the equivalent of $13 to a relative in despair for basic medicines barely 100km away.
This is where the phone number of that LC3 chairperson or member of parliament comes in handy — for you to tell them off about why there are no medicines at that health centre and to ask when they will be availed.
On the Parliament website, unfortunately, the contacts database had not yet been updated by the time the President was teaching us civics.
In the spirit of ‘Term No More Sleep’, I raised this with the director of communications at Parliament and will be chasing him a bit more to get it done.
This approach is not limited to me because of some superpower. I believe some of my friends get surprised when I tell them to do the same; and I suspect they feel chagrined because there must be a certain level of irritation in my voice and text messages when I do so. I feel the irritation is justified because we - the ‘educated’ ‘elite’ (the two do not always go together in this part of the world) should really know better.
We should Be Serious about our affairs because they are OUR affairs and nobody else’s.
And those of us with an education, we consider worth talking about, should put it to much better use so we do not occupy the President of the entire country as a teacher of civics as he was that day, or basic economics as he does whenever he tells us about the Parish Development Model and how obviously sensible it is as. This time it is ‘Term No More Sleeping On Our Education’.
www.skaheru.com @skaheru
There are others who, when in the same situation, dial the police station hotline or the officer-in-charge at their station and summon assistance.
Among those are the ones who, if that assistance does not arrive on time and they still live to see the next day, mobilise the neighbourhood for a security meeting at which the Police officers are held to account and made to do their jobs with more diligence.
While the President was speaking on budget day, I went to the Parliament website to confirm that the numbers of all the Members of Parliament had been uploaded.
The site is parliament.go.ug and has been active for many years now.
Not many people know that their representatives in the House are required to make their contacts public for purposes of consultation.
Even people who went to institutions of learning through to university level sometimes have no clue about how this is supposed to work. Sadly for our national management, too many of us believe debating in private WhatsApp forums amongst ourselves on issues that sometimes include countries like Iran will make a major difference to the state of affairs where we live.
It rarely does.
Instead, after a highly intellectual debate about statements by the US secretary of war, then climate change and then the trial of a seemingly deranged child killer, some of us have to deal with ways of sending the equivalent of $13 to a relative in despair for basic medicines barely 100km away.
This is where the phone number of that LC3 chairperson or member of parliament comes in handy — for you to tell them off about why there are no medicines at that health centre and to ask when they will be availed.
On the Parliament website, unfortunately, the contacts database had not yet been updated by the time the President was teaching us civics.
In the spirit of ‘Term No More Sleep’, I raised this with the director of communications at Parliament and will be chasing him a bit more to get it done.
This approach is not limited to me because of some superpower. I believe some of my friends get surprised when I tell them to do the same; and I suspect they feel chagrined because there must be a certain level of irritation in my voice and text messages when I do so. I feel the irritation is justified because we - the ‘educated’ ‘elite’ (the two do not always go together in this part of the world) should really know better.
We should Be Serious about our affairs because they are OUR affairs and nobody else’s.
And those of us with an education, we consider worth talking about, should put it to much better use so we do not occupy the President of the entire country as a teacher of civics as he was that day, or basic economics as he does whenever he tells us about the Parish Development Model and how obviously sensible it is as. This time it is ‘Term No More Sleeping On Our Education’.
www.skaheru.com @skaheru