{"id":32120,"date":"2017-01-27T01:10:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T01:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/museveni-s-rule-through-the-eyes-of-1986-babies\/"},"modified":"2017-01-27T01:10:11","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T01:10:11","slug":"museveni-s-rule-through-the-eyes-of-1986-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/museveni-s-rule-through-the-eyes-of-1986-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"Museveni\u2019s rule through the eyes of 1986 babies"},"content":{"rendered":"

{On the day President Museveni formally announced takeover of government 31 years ago, a peasant family in the Ntungamo District was thrilled but for an entirely different reason: the birth of a baby boy. } <\/p>\n

The parents named him Constantine Ahimbisibwe, a surname meaning \u201cpraise him\u201d. This was to acclaim him as God\u2019s gift but not to validate the Kalashnikov rifle-slinging National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels\u2019 march on Kampala. <\/p>\n

As President Museveni walked to the podium yesterday to give an account of his three decades in power, making him Africa\u2019s fifth longest-serving leader, Mr Ahimbisibwe, who lives in southwestern Uganda, said his headache will be how to put food on the table for his family of four. <\/p>\n

\u201cLife has been miserable because I get problems accessing basic necessities,\u201d said the Senior Four drop-out and father of two. <\/p>\n

With inadequate employable skills, Mr Ahimbisibwe\u2019s struggles epitomise his generation\u2019s dilemma and the general divide of the Ugandan society where progress has concentrated opportunities and riches in the hands of a few. <\/p>\n

It is the kind of inequality which, according to Oxfam International\u2019s January 18, 2017 report titled \u201cAn economy for the 1 per cent\u201d, has enabled the world\u2019s wealthiest 62 people amass as much fortune as half of the global population.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest trepidation is the likely war between the poor and the rich,\u201d former Museveni government minister Aggrey Awori said of the Ugandan situation. \u201cThe gap is getting wider and tribalised. Once the inequality becomes ethnicised, it becomes dangerous.\u201d <\/p>\n

Both inequality and sectarianism are two of many ills that the President set forth to fight after seizing power in 1986. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe third point in our programme is the question of the unity of our country,\u201d he said in his January 29, 1986 inaugural speech on the foyer of Parliament. The crowd thundered. <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cPast regimes have used sectarianism to divide people along religious and tribal lines…Politics is about the provision of roads, water, drugs, in hospitals and schools for children.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Mr Museveni\u2019s credit, the Universal Primary Education (UPE) his government introduced in 1997, has increased primary school enrolment from 2.5 million to about eight million today. Mr Gershom Nuwemuhwezi, a lecturer at Bishop Stuart University, is a UPE beneficiary. His mother in 1986 began experiencing birth pangs while vending bananas at a market in Kazo in Kiruhura, the President\u2019s home district, and delivered at the nearby Kazo Health Centre III (now Health Centre IV).<\/p>\n

{{Period of peace}}<\/p>\n

With a First Class Bachelor\u2019s degree and a Master\u2019s degree pinned to his lapel, Mr Nuwemuhwezi recaps his life lived under one president as a period of \u201cpeace and luck\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe lived hand-to-mouth,\u201d he said, \u201cWhile growing up, most of the places were hard-to-reach, and one would even fear to travel at night. But now I board the night bus to go and study at Uganda Christian University [in Mukono] without having to worry about who is seated next to me.\u201d The overnight travels, previously considered precarious due to possible ambushes, are happening across the country. <\/p>\n

Peace and stability, discounted in northern Uganda by the protracted Lord\u2019s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency that ended in 2005, alongside management of the army and economy are President\u2019s flagship feats. They have earned Uganda regional and international acclaim, projecting the country\u2019s profile.<\/p>\n

Besides, Uganda\u2019s gross domestic product under Museveni\u2019s watch increased from $4b (about Shs14 trillion) in 1986 to $33b (about Shs115.5 trillion) in 2013, according to World Bank figures, expanding eight times almost the same as Kenya\u2019s which within the same period jumped from $7.2b to $55b. <\/p>\n

In Uganda, what Mr Awori calls \u201cunprecedented corruption\u201d threatens the dividends of this growth in spite of a plethora of institutions such as the Inspectorate of Government, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, the police and the Anti-Corruption Court assembled to fight graft.<\/p>\n

Transparency International\u2019s 2016 Corruption Perception Index report released yesterday ranked Uganda among 25 countries with the worst graft record, and it dropped 12 places from its previous year\u2019s rating. <\/p>\n

Eliminating corruption, together with other vices such as tribalism, were among 10 priorities in NRA\/M\u2019s must-do-list. Political opponents have accused the President of practicing \u2018naked\u2019 nepotism. His wife is the Education minister, their son, who was a teenager in 1986, bypassed predecessors and rose to a one-star general within 12 years to command the country\u2019s Special Forces, before being re-assigned this month as his father\u2019s adviser, a similar role the President\u2019s brother Salim Saleh plays.<\/p>\n

Mr Museveni has defended this family-web as a \u201csacrifice\u201d, not favouritism. Critics call the semantics obscurantism, the parlance the President used in his inaugural address to explain a brand of politics \u201cwhere ideas are deliberately obscured so that what is false appears to be true and vice versa\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Elly James Makholo was born in June 1986, but after obtaining a diploma in Social Works and Social Administration from UCU last year, the unemployment reality staring at him contrasts the lofty promises of education.<\/p>\n

Unfulfilled aspirations, said Mr Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesman, is likely to alienate the masses from the NRM because people generally have a \u201chigh expectation\u201d due to prevailing peace and government\u2019s robust investment in infrastructure. <\/p>\n

The construction of Karuma and Isimba dams, once completed next year, will increase electricity supply from the current 852 megawatts to 1,635, likely to spur industrialisation which is at the heart of the incumbent President\u2019s programme to transform Uganda.<\/p>\n

For Mr Makholo in Mbale District, there is the disappointment of poor quality public service and joblessness. The construction of Bukeinde Health Centre III in 2014 reduced the walking distance to the nearest health facility to his home by more than two kilometres under the decentralisation policy meant to bring services closer to the people.. <\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the time, patients are there but there are no drugs. That\u2019s the life we are living,\u201d said Mr Makholo, a leader of Mbale Youth Ministry. His embrace of ministering to the youth mirrors the gust in Pentecostal movement in the country -and the appeal of prosperity gospel- shown in the almost 7 percentage point rise in number of Pentecostals in the decade to the 2014 National Housing and Population Census.
\nThe uneven benefits of Museveni rule contrasts with the chosen theme for today\u2019s anniversary; \u201cSuccess under NRM: a shared victory\u201d.<\/p>\n

Obliterating 27 rebel groups and winning five consecutive elections, questions about vote rigging notwithstanding, have made Mr Museveni the only constant in a changing Uganda. Concerns about how he departs from the scene when the time comes – whether through force, ballot or natural causes- ties Ugandans\u2019 fate to his own.
\nMr Opondo said a disruption would be unlikely because \u201csafety valves through democratic elections have provided adequate platforms for citizens to vent…and the elite are unable to merge their concerns with that of the masses\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Museveni\u2019s<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{On the day President Museveni formally announced takeover of government 31 years ago, a peasant family in the Ntungamo District was thrilled but for an entirely different reason: the birth of a baby boy. } The parents named him Constantine Ahimbisibwe, a surname meaning \u201cpraise him\u201d. This was to acclaim him as God\u2019s gift but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99],"byline":[2481],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-32120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-daily-monitor"],"bylines":[{"id":2481,"name":"DAILY MONITOR","slug":"daily-monitor","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2481,"name":"DAILY MONITOR","slug":"daily-monitor","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32120"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=32120"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=32120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}