SHILLINGS AND CENTS

By Paul Busharizi

In the last week, the New Vision has published excerpts of the Auditor Generalâ€™s report on the finances of the Commonwealth Headâ€™s of Government Meeting.

Hosting the Commonwealth leaders two years ago was a major landmark for Uganda, in as far as we had several heads of state streaming in including the Queen of England.

Prior to the event, questions were asked about how the Government planned to leverage the event to, for example, promote tourism.

The answers were vague at best and mainly revolved around â€œJust by hosting the event the world will know Uganda and tourists will come in automatically.â€

We are still waiting.
But the Auditor Generalâ€™s report provides adequate explanation why our planners were not looking beyond hosting the Commonwealth meet.

Clearly officials could not afford to blink for fear they would miss out on the free-for-all feeding frenzy that was going on around the Commonwealth meeting funds trough.

Interestingly the eye popping revelations about the sh370b-and-mounting event caused less of a stir among the public, compared to the missing millions lost by National Forestry Authority boss, Damian Akankwasa, or the hundreds of millions in assets acquired by Principal Accountant, Nestor Gasasira, on a sh6m a year salary.

This should not surprise anyone. We, the public cannot wrap our heads around the billions of shillings pilfered annually but can relate to tales of enrichment of individuals because there we can compare with our own, often sorry, predicament. As a public we have become increasingly cynical.

As outsiders looking in on the party, we cannot help but feel that, considering the huge sums being stolen, there must be tacit approval from the system.

Otherwise, how do the car dealers, for instance, pass off three-year-old cars leased for the event as brand new and then go ahead to inflate the contract price way beyond what one would pay to buy a brand new car?

If our state machinery cannot, will not or does not want to check these kind of shenanigans, what confidence can we have in the same system protecting us from terrorists?

As far as I can see everyone is for sale.

How different is it diverting billions towards self enrichment, while people die from preventable diseases because our health system cannot cope for lack of resources from taking money from a terrorist and look the other way while his bomb kills a handful of revelers on a night out?

And the general public should stop giggling at tales of graft and care about corruptionâ€™s repercussions.

Poverty eradication should be our number one priority because beyond its dehumanising impact it has a destabilising effect on whole societies by triggering instability and chaos.

Corruption is like a tiger, you may only ride it for so long (please donâ€™t try that at home) before it runs amok and turns on you.

Many times in this column I have argued that this country does not lack resources, it just lacks management, and this goes beyond technical capacity to include managers with threadbare moral fibre.

The vicious cycle has long been complete.

The bar of morality has been pulled down so low it is now part of a collective psyche to believe one cannot prosper without stealing.

We applaud our corrupt officials even when the mathematics is clear that there is no way they would have accumulated what they have on a civil servantâ€™s salary.

Looking forward, it is not difficult to see that corruption will be so pervasive as to be unmanageable by the civilised judicial processes (if it has not already happened).

It will get so out of hand that a shot to the back of the head with your family billed for the bullet will become a more palatable option.

Fortunately an anti-corruption bill is being brought to the house which proposes the confiscation of a convicted corrupt officialâ€™s property.

But this should go further and empower Uganda Revenue Authority or another such agency to bring anybody to task to account for their wealth, if their income declarations with the tax authority do not support the personâ€™s wealth.

The question is who will bell the cat?

pbusharizi@newvision.co.ug

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Clement Okumu Omubba

By NewVision Reporter

Journalists @NewVision