President Museveni’s State of the Nation Address Was Full of Contradictions of His Own Beliefs

 

President Museveni’s State of the Nation Address Was Full of Contradictions of His Own Beliefs

Yesterday 7^th June 2023Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni delivered the 2022-2023 state of the nation speech at the Kololo grounds where he made some insights about the state of the socio-economic, political and security situation of the country.

Interestingly, the president spent almost 80% of his three hour speech on the state of the economy in which he made some interesting revelations that also contradicted his own long held views.

 

For instance, Museveni reiterated his long held view that a society that is metamorphosing into a first rate society has got less people dwelling in agriculture as their main occupation. He qualified this point by giving figures in which he revealed that the US, UK and most developed countries all have less than 2% of the average population engaged in agriculture in contrast to the third world which has more than 70%.

At the same time he is the same man who has had a long held view that Ugandans should engage more in agriculture by desisting from land fragmentation by taking advantage of government programs like NAADS, operation wealth creation etc. In fact he used the sam occasion to congratulate Gen Salim Saleh’s operation wealth creation program for having lifted assize able percentage of Ugandans from poverty through supply of seedlings, animal breeds and other innovations-which are all agricultural-orientated in nature. This obviously means that he still believes that agriculture is the way to go for his country. This could mean that the president is not entirely convinced that agriculture can transform society. And yet at the same time he contradicts this sentiment by imploring Ugandans to engage in the same (agricultural) practice.

Some of us think that the president should boldly assist Ugandans from agricultural practices through deliberate programs by instituting programs that can create a conducive environment for the urban folk to engage in wealth creation.

 Some of the measures revolve around making sure that his government institutes affordable tax regimes even offering tax holidays to the urban dwellers, affordable power tariffs, deliver on the infrastructural obligations of good roads, railways, waterways, etc. More importantly the parish development model should have been dedicated to urban dwellers to activate them into development to attract more Ugandans from rural areas.

The president seems oblivious of the fact that the Ugandan youths have already embraced his view of moving out of agriculture by migrating to urban areas by selling land to engage in services like boda-bodas, hawking. Unfortunately, it’s his same NRM government that is frustrating Ugandans from metamorphosing from agricultural practices.

But it goes without saying that the NRM government doesn’t seem to have a well nurtured policy on how to regulate the services sector.

They don’t seem to know what to do with hawkers, the boda-bodas and the informal sector at large. Instead Museveni has opted to play politics with these urban dwellers by patronizing them by conscripting them into the Muhoozi and Jajja projects.

As a result of this confusion, the informal sector and urban dweller in general is surviving without paying taxes and any sort of regulation because he still relies on state patronage.

Yet the best alternative should have been to find a way to regulate the urban Ugandans, create a conducive working environment for them and eventually find a way of conscripting them into the taxation system so that they can have an input into the national economy.

CONTRADICTING STATISTICS OF THE STRATEGISTS

Another shocking contradiction of the speech was that the president seemed to be at variance with the written script that had been authored by officials from the ministry of finance. He spent most of the time either contradicting or disagreeing with the figures, statistics and agreed positions of his economic strategists.

Last year Mr. Museveni shocked economic experts when he revealed that Uganda had achieved middle income status, an assertion that his economic strategists and the World Bank unanimously disagreed with. This time he revealed that the Ugandan economists were under estimating the development of the economic progress being made and picked out the milk sector which he claimed that had multiplied by 190%.

Incidentally, Mr. Museveni passionately believes it’s {the milk output} is much more than that 190%.. However, if the milk sector has developed at a tremendous pace, what has your NRM done to tap that growth potential? Why has the extra supply of milk not subsidized the prices of milk around the country-evidence actually shows that the price of a one litter of milk is costing much more than ever before at 2,400 per litter in most areas of Kampala.

Secondly, why doesn’t the president talk about the possibility of instituting an industry that can transform the milk into powder milk that can make Uganda a power house in the milk industry on the continent?

GLOBAL CONTRADICTION

President Museveni also insists that the economy will grow from the current USD 52bn to USD55bn within the next twelve months.

However, he quickly forgets that that projected growth may not arise because he has already plunged the country into an economic crisis by signing the anti-gay bill last month that incited the western powers to unleash sanctions that will have a very negative effect on the economy.

The president is oblivious of the fact that the sanctions from the donors will obviously lead to a decline of the tourism sector-which the president praised for having contributed tremendously to the national treasury according to the statistics; Uganda generated around 518 million US dollars from the tourism sector and I known to contribute almost 4% to the GDP.

Given the fact that homosexuality was already a criminal offense in Uganda even before this law was legislated upon  this year, the president should have desisted from assenting on it to maintain or protect Uganda’s reputation as a free country for tourists all over the globe.

 

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a blogger, and social policy critic kamwadafred@gmail.com