Corruption is not the main problem in Uganda, but its misdiagnosis

Op-Ed: According to Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, all complex issues, contradictions, conflicts, development blockers, and challenges like poverty, crime, corruption, and insecurity, to mention but a few, can only be decisively solved through a ‘Doctor-Patient’ process.

The modern human medical doctor uses a scientific process to diagnose a patient’s ailment using testable evidence, listening, synthesis, proper information management, and feedback.

The doctor doesn’t merely initiate surgical operations or administer treatment to a patient simply because she sees a loss of health.

However, in reality, contrary to even Gen. Museveni’s concepts of problem-solving, the corruption problem in Uganda is handled like 500 professional doctors attempting to treat what they neither understand nor have taken any trouble to diagnose.

Misdiagnosis of corruption is the only problem with corruption in Uganda, therefore, not corruption itself. Misdiagnosis is at 5 levels of what would be scientific planning in Uganda.

1. Political misdiagnosis is whereby powerful Ugandan politicians and their segregated followers aim to utilize accusations of corruption against opponents to attain their surrender, loss of support from the public, or simply to disorganize their political popularity and power. We have seen incidences where the opposition of NRM and their supporters target particular NRM leading politicians, calling them corrupt, but with no justifiable evidence that is permissible in any court.

This derails the corruption fight and turns it into political wars instead, while the real corrupt are ignored. Ugandan politicians sort of expect every accused to be arrested and prosecuted by a just and fair justice system, but without any merit of a case. Some of the main victims of this misdiagnosis have been both the opposition and government leaders.

We have heard Hon. Joel Ssenyonyi and Bobi Wine’s ‘faction’ against NUP accusing Hon. Mpuuga of being very corrupt, but none seems to provide testable evidence that can be used by even an LC1 court. There are only rumors of ‘he took the money’, he ate’ it, but a sane legal mind cannot properly relate what they are saying to the constitutional meaning of corruption as far as Ugandan laws are concerned and defined.

Creating your own interpretation of the law is not actually justice, but Ugandans do this a lot. Then the other faction of Bobi also soon began a campaign accusing Ssenyonyi of ‘eating’ UGX 1.7 billion. Without any evidence, nobody actually saw him, and the one who claims to have seen him also has no proof to share, e.g., photography, recordings, other valid witnesses, etc.

If you listen to Gen. Museveni, he often says, “Just bring the evidence,”  and there is nothing much he can add on. He is very accurate, as the law of Uganda expects the accuser to prove what they are saying beyond doubt. No justice wants to remand anyone, but since most suspects are politically arrested, the justice gives them the benefit of doubt, hence infringing on the rights of innocent Ugandans who are already suffering.

The President’s suggestion of “no bail to corruption suspects” does not therefore solve the “evidence lack” problem, as it’s not a problem caused by the suspects, who are most often innocent and victims of local misguided, underdeveloped politics and a corrupt crime management system.

2. The second level of misdiagnosis is a quickly adapting, well-coordinated corruption system and people. No Ugandan corrupt person acts alone, and with time, these teams situated at every resource-laden position of influence learn to bypass any controls without being detected.

To be detected here implies attaining testable evidence that can be admissible in a Ugandan court. If a team of procurement officers at the sub-county level created a ‘Ghost Contractor” under the names of strangers, awarded themselves the contract, and used it to siphon billions of project money, even if you know it, there is no scientific way of proving that any of them are related to that ghostly entity.

If enjawulo (extortion) is attained from a contractor by this same Çlique, which leads to shoddy, delayed, or incomplete projects, there is still nobody willing to testify, as both the briber and the bribed are the suspects in this case.

3. The third level of misdiagnosis is caused by endemic corruption at the investigation and even arresting levels: the CIDs, the Police, ISO, CMI, the Military Police, and any office tasked with enforcing Ugandan anti-corruption laws.

For starters, the Uganda Police, with hundreds of references we cannot tag due to space, which His Excellency expects to help in proper diagnosis and evidence gathering, are actually the Masters of Misdiagnosis due to historic cultural corruption, a lack of appropriate investigative skills and tools, a lack of patriotism, and even a lack resources to follow up on any case.

Have you ever heard the police say, “We have no fuel to drive up to that place to see!?” Well, they are not lying. Your country is poor because of the same corruption everywhere. You either look for the money and fund the investigation or leave it.

His Excellency Gen. Museveni has often accused the Uganda Police and other intelligence gathering and law enforcement bodies of all partaking in all the above, whereby, in the case of Katto Kajubi, they “messed up the evidence.”

Crime scenes are not properly secured or cordoned off from adulteration in Uganda; no finger prints are taken as everyone has already touched something at the scene; suspects are carried like potatoes on “Kabangali”; torture is common; and this is one of the easiest ways for the judge to distrust any evidence brought in.

The torture is a last-minute attempt to bypass the scientific process of crime data gathering, which they all messed up earlier, and it has never led a judge to any logical conviction of anybody.

The Uganda Police culture is not about convicting even the suspect whose evidence of crime can be attained, but about profiting from whatever case comes to their desk. If the victim is rich (potential), the first officer to reach the crime scene will most likely be compromised, and that will be the end of that case. If the case makes it to the police station, the file will never be seen by the state attorney.

If it makes it to the state attorney, the Rich Corrupt Network of Ugandan suspects also knows how these can be ‘bought off”. That is the real Uganda, where diagnosis can therefore never be complete and accurate, let alone fair to the state or the fleeced, who are the Ugandan taxpayers.

4. The fourth line of misdiagnosis of corruption in Uganda is at the Uganda Courts of Law, the Judiciary. Several independent bodies have named the Uganda Judiciary as the most corrupt in the history of Africans alongside the police, over and over and over.

And these are the people Gen. Museveni is saying we take the evidence to end corruption. Isn’t it ironic and weird to even suggest such a thing? If the “exhibit” survives police tampering, it will not survive the next “eating and tampering stage” of the Ugandan justice system.

No impoverished ‘normal’ Ugandan court officer shall sentence a rich corrupt person without attempting to eat or save the suspect. It only happens in your dreams and imagination. To anticipate the most meat-eating dog not to eat meat is not scientific. That’s why most criminals in Ugandan jails are impoverished Ugandans who cannot be ‘eaten from’.

5. The fifth stage of corruption misdiagnosis comes from the executive herself. As you can see, the executive is advising all Ugandans to visit the most corrupt doctors in the world and hand over  ‘Evidence’ about the corrupt Well Knowing such a system cannot and does not function even as anticipated by any Cabinet Minister alive. Is there a Ugandan MP who trusts his case with the Uganda Police without worry? Tell me.

If he or she is there, she or he has the Shaka Zulu soul. But even the police and justices do not trust themselves in Uganda. No serious Ugandan trusts Ugandan things, which is why those who fall and have money go outside Uganda for treatment.

If there was a foreign Ugandan police service or justice system, I am sure all Ugandan ministers, MPs, tycoons, judges, even senior policemen, ambassadors, etc. would report their cases there too, not to their Ugandan ones, just like they seek health services elsewhere outside Uganda, not with the Mulago Doctor of Diagnosis.

A sane mind who doesn’t trust their own Native Doctor can therefore never trust their own police and magistrates. The above misdiagnosis has led to the creation of several duplications in the anti-corruption war with the creation of agencies such as the state house anti-corruption team, ‘Special Police”, the new audit team led by Afande Karemera, the one led by Afande Nalweiso, the other by Afande Nakalema, SHIPU, etc., but still, the trillions cannot be stopped from exiting the system the same way it has always done. Why??

Now, what can we do??

Since we have already diagnosed the problem of corruption in Uganda in the above article qualitatively using common sense that most Ugandans would agree with, in the next article I shall tell you what the government of Uganda and all the Ugandan people can do, as most that are being suggested today are worthless as regards scientific planning as advocated by the National Resistance Movement policies, planning, and problem-solving standards.

If the movement itself was following the procedures as laid out in ‘Patient-Doctor”, corruption would not end, as it’s “instinctive to human beings,” but it would not be to an obscene level whereby we lose over 20% of the budget to the corrupt.

As for now, corruption remains the biggest national security threat to Uganda, as the corrupt usually use this loot to establish conflicting power bases within any running constitutional system, and no arm of the government is safe from the infiltration and control of corruption-laden money, not even one. And these shall one day capture power from the masses, as we have observed in the history of Nigeria.

The author is Prof. Makombo Jago-Minyang Asiimwe, Freelance Investigative Journalist and Masindi Assistant Resident District Commissioner.

Disclaimer: As UG Repoorts Media LTD, we welcome any opinion from anyone if it’s constructive for the development of Uganda. All the expressions and opinions in this write-up are not those of UG Reports Media Ltd. but of the author of the article.

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