Oil won’t change lives in a corrupt system, Muntu warns

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In an environment rife with corruption, Maj. Gen. (rtd) Gregory Mugisha Muntu says it is highly likely that Uganda’s much-anticipated oil wealth may not improve the livelihoods of ordinary citizens.

Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) presidential flag-bearer made these remarks during a press conference at Hill View Hotel in Kagadi town council on October 24, 2025, before setting off for campaign rallies in Kyegegwa and Kyenjojo districts in the Tooro region.

Responding to journalists’ questions on whether Uganda’s oil sector might suffer the same fate as Angola’s, Muntu said while he is not fully abreast with developments in the African country, indications suggest that its oil revenues never truly benefited the citizens but rather a small group of elites.

He added that Africa offers several classic examples where oil wealth, despite sparking infrastructure booms and other grand projects, failed to transform the lives of ordinary people.

“There are countries in Africa which are resource-rich but which are wallowing in poverty… The focus has not been on the development of the people, the focus has been on the use of oil resources to develop infrastructure, but also the consumptive regime and the elite class,” he said.

Previously, the former army commander, using Ogoniland in Nigeria as a textbook example, pointed out that without safe hands like his, it is highly likely that Ugandans will get a raw deal. Already, he contends that the Government, which has failed to manage the few resources cannot be trusted with a bigger amount.   

“People think that because there is oil, the area will develop. They should just go and look at what happened in Ogun State in Nigeria. The people there, oil was a curse to them. Every time I come to Bunyoro, I tell them Please be careful. If you have people who don’t care about others, they will just exploit these riches that are God-given,” Muntu warned Buliisa residents at the beginning of this week.

Presidential amnesty

Muntu later travelled to Kyegegwa, where he campaigned at Hapuyo town council in Kyaka North, reminding residents of the need for peaceful change.

He emphasised that his government would not persecute President Yoweri Museveni after he is retired through the ballot box.

Instead, he promised to accord him the same dignified treatment that Kenya’s late President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi enjoyed upon retiring to his Kabarak home ahead of the 2002 presidential elections.

The same olive branch had been extended by incarcerated veteran politician Col (Rtd) Dr Kizza Besigye during an Opposition retreat at Speke Resort Munyonyo on June 2, 2023, which was attended by National Unity Platform (NUP) President Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu alias Bobi Wine.

“The people were very bitter in Kenya, I can tell you, in fact, at the handover after the election of the new leader, President Kibaki (Mwai), Moi was stoned as he left the handover ceremony (at Nyayo Stadium) because people were very bitter with him,” Besigye alluded.

“But because the thing had gone smoothly, he went to his Kabarak (in Nakuru County) home and stayed and died in peace, and Kenya moved on. That is a dialogue that we can have, not a dialogue on Constitutional reforms,” he said.

In that election Mwai Kibaki, a Makerere-trained economist, representing the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), defeated Moi’s preferred successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, with 62 per cent of the vote. Kenyatta contested on the ticket of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the pre-independence party that had dominated Kenya’s politics for decades.

Prior to that, Kibaki had served as Finance Minister in Kenya’s first post-independence government led by Kamau Ngengi, who later changed his name to Jomo Kenyatta, Vice President under Moi from 1978 to 1988 and Minister of Health from 1988 until 1991, when he broke ranks with Moi to form his own Democratic Party (DP).

NRA ideals

According to Muntu, this was imperative because the ideals which had propelled the NRM Government to power in 1986 had been abandoned on the wayside. Citing joblessness, shortage of drugs in hospitals, terrible road infrastructure and biting poverty, citizens have endured for 40 years now.

“We have just come from the Bunyoro region. Yesterday we were in Kagadi, the previous day in Kakumiro and Kibaale. We used the road from Karuguuza, it’s in a terrible state,” he said.

“We passed through here before; I think some of you were still young in 1983. Back then, we were heading to the Rwenzori region. Many young people may not know that at that time, we had left Luwero, where we had spent three years, to open another front in Rwenzori. From there, we went on to capture Fort Portal, Kasese, Mbarara, Masaka, and Katonga,” the former army commander alluded.

Unfortunately, when they finally took power, Muntu, who formed part of the fighting force, said many leaders including President Yoweri Museveni, thought that it was the gun that brought victory.

And yet, much as they used guns, what truly enabled them to capture power was the power of the people.