President's 'okunyonyola' method is paying off

The President's method of reaching out to the people and making them understand the message, has always been through (Okunyonyola) Luganda for (explain, enlighten, expounding), as opposed to mere lecturing.

With his (Okunyonyola) mode of communication, the masses are able to understand and internalise his message of wealth creation.

Okunyonyola means okushoborora in Lunyakitara, aiticaunun in Ateso, titolok in Luo.

To appreciate the significance of opening up and connecting every part of the country with a modern road network, one needs to check the interaction on the President's social media pages: In one such response, a David Wozei commented on the revamping of the road to Kisoro, all the way to the border with the DRC: "I recall one of my journeys on that road with a university bus in 2004 up to Busnza (close to the DRC border). It was quite a journey! The road was rocky, locals had bicycles with special 26-rim tyres to handle the rocky terrain."

On the Karamoja half of the campaign, Bikanga Muzamil noted: "A few years back, it was unpleasant to visit Karamoja. Even people rejected the position of being Karamoja ministers. But now, it is becoming a tourism hub."

For many of these areas, inaccessibility did not just affect them economically. It also posed a security risk.

In Karamoja, for example, marooned in their corner of the country and with no significant economic interaction with the rest of the population, herdsmen for long roamed the sub-region with thousands of unlicensed guns, terrorising their neighbours in Teso, robbing their cows and fermenting insecurity that for long destabilised the east and northeastern parts of the country.

In the west, particularly in the Rwenzori, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) for long took advantage of the mountainous topography to occasionally terrorise local communities, the most infamous of which was the attack on Kicwamba Technical College in 1998, in which 80 students were burnt alive in their dormitories and 100 others abducted.

Today, as Muzamil points out, Karamoja is fast opening Wealth creation campaign: President's ‘okunyonyola' method is paying off up to economic activity, especially in the fields of mining and tourism, facilitated by an all-weather road network, after the government undertook a successful disarmament of the rustlers in the early 2000s, which pacified the region.

In the Rwenzori, ADF is now a thing of history after its thorough defeat by the UPDF.

On Saturday, a few kilometres from Kicwamba Technical College - the scene of that horrific ADF massacre 21 years ago, the President on his way to Ntoroko stopped to admire the beauty and serenity of the area and responders in the comments section of his tweet marvelled at the beauty and engineering bend of that Bundibugyo-Fort Portal road, now a critical gateway to DRC.

It was eloquent symbolism of how the fortunes of the area have significantly changed - for the better!

Prioritising security and investing in highway roads like the Bundibugyo Fort Portal road, the Gulu-Nimule road, the Vurra-Oraba road, Ntungamo-Mirama Hills road, Moroto-Nakapiripirit, Mbarara-Kabale-Katuna road among others, has proved an invaluable enabler of trade with our neighbours and served to unlock our tourism potential, by making our touristic resources easily accessible.

Today, we have a trade surplus with our regional neighbours to the tune of $2.3b as at the end of 2018 and our annual tourist arrivals have increased from a mere 260,000 as of 2007 at the end of the LRA insurgency, to the nearly two million today.

Now, as we move to create new cities in response to increasing urbanisation, the focus is on the urban roads, to forestall the congestion and overcrowding that is often associated with emerging cities.

Thus a key feature of the President's tours has been the commissioning of such urban roads in all municipalities, which have been constructed with the support of the World Bank under the Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure Development programme.

But as the President has repeatedly pointed out, this elaborate security and transport infrastructure cannot be an end in itself.

Rather, it should be seen and utilised as an enabler to generate individual and household wealth, in pursuance of our national vision of a "transformed Ugandan society from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country" by 2040.

We should all embrace the agenda.

The writer is the Minister for General Duties, Office of the Prime Minister