{UAH} MUSEVENI'S ARMY LED CORONA RELIEF FOOD DISTRIBUTION WAS BOUND TO FAIL

MUSEVENI'S ARMY LED CORONA RELIEF FOOD DISTRIBUTION WAS BOUND TO FAIL

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CHANGE OF GUARDS - At the start of Museveni's COVID-19 lockdown two months ago, he had no plan of giving out relief food to urban residents. His plan had been to make life difficult for the majority of vulnerable urban poor who are traditionally hostile to his hold on power, so that they relocate from the city to the countryside. It was only when the opposition leaders came out to give out relief food that he too unceremoniously jumped into the scheme. He threatened to arrest and prefer charges of attempted murder to anyone who would be found distributing relief food to the vulnerable people. He feared that the opposition leaders were stealing the show to his disadvantage. In that regard, he arbitrarily announced his scheme to give out relief food to residents of Kampala, Wakiso and Mukono. Before passing a Sh. 59bn supplementary budget for the said relief food, Parliament passed a motion halting the exercise until government would come up with a comprehensive plan of catering for the whole country. Government simply ignored parliament and went ahead to distribute food.

The army, police and LDUs took the lead in the door to door food distribution in the city. He launched a parallel scheme dubbed COVID-19 Fund for solicitation of relief donations from companies, wealthy individuals, organizations and other entities. Shortly after take off, the food distribution was hit by the usual procurement scandals hinging on inflated prices by the usual suspect, the office of the I Minister (OPM). Then the Speaker of Parliament revealed to the country that the food being distributed to the vulnerable was expired and rotten. The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBRS) also confirmed the said food being unfit for human consumption. The slow pace of food distribution in the city prompted some residents to go into streets protesting and demanding for food. The regime announced boosting of its capacity with the deployment of 1,000 Prison Warders.

After realizing that his ill-motivated food distribution was failing, in one of his national addresses, Museveni suggested allowing people whose economic survival in urban centres was difficult to return to the countryside. He relaxed his earlier directive and allowed other individuals and entities to contribute and directly distribute food. Since then, he has stopped talking about food distribution in his national addresses. The uncoordinated so-called phased easing of his lockdown is a consequence of his failed food distribution. Otherwise, he had all along wished to have a much longer total lockdown for his economic and political gains.

His top sycophant, Gen. Elly Tumwine took the overall command of the army-led food distribution.  He was the NRA Army Commander when Museveni took power in 1986. During his tenure, the guerrilla army that had portrayed itself as disciplined and incorruptible showed its trues colours.  Supply of air, substandard and inflated procurement, favouritism in awarding of defence tenders and contracts, and inflated payrolls was the order of the day under Gen. Elly Tumwine. Within the top NRA rank and file, the control and accruing of personal benefits from the flawed system of supplies was a source of  clashes. These serious irregularities negatively impacted the welfare of the troops and hence the operational efficiency in dealing with the start of the insurgency in northern Uganda.  No wonder, Tumwine was sacked two years later but the seed of military corruption had been sown, germinated and was to flourish later.

Gen. Tumwine was replaced by Gen. Saleh whose short-lived tenure was relieved with the appointment of Gen. Mugisha Muntu. The supply of food items was halted and, instead , a system of paying out a Ration Cash Allowance (RCA) to individual soldiers was initiated. However, soldiers serving in the so-called Operational Areas continued to be availed supplies of food on top of their RCA. The creation of auxiliary forces in the northern, eastern band the Rwenzori regions came at hand to keep the supplies and salary vote of army afloat. That is when some of the top managers at headquarters level and in the field connived to swindle huge sums of cash through inflated enemy threat and the accruing of financial and logistical provisions.

During his tenure, Gen. Mugisha Muntu attempted to initiate a  mechanism of checking these irregularities by carrying out a spot check and the actual strength of personnel but Muntu was blocked halfway. The vice continued unabetted and next we heard of scandals like the one of inflated procurement of junk helicopters, the procurement of undersized uniforms, the procurement of 42 train wagons of expired food rations from South Africa.

The external military expeditions, more especially to Congo, made matters worse. Creation of non existing soldiers dubbed Ghost Soldiers whose cash payments would be pocketed by the few beneficiaries reached its climax. The highly connected Capt. Dan Byakutaaga is said to have run away with Sh. 1.6bn meant for soldiers' pay in Congo (DRC). He was facilitated to flee the country and was later joined by his wife and children. In some instances, fake US Dollars were being paid to soldiers serving in Congo. In the early 2000, Museveni instituted the Mbabazi Probe Committee on Ghost Soldiers which received alarming testimonies. The insurgency hit northern Uganda was found to have been the epicenter of the vice. The development confirmed the long held version that the northern Uganda insurgency had been turned into business by some players.

In 2013, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was shocked to learn that at one time the army had bought a single saucepan at 2m shillings and a gas cooker at 8m shillings. The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence justified the procurement by attributing it to a "war situation".  Museveni simply used the Mbabazi Ghost Soldiers' probe findings to extract personal loyalty from those top Commanders who had been overwhelmingly implicated. No one was held accountable and all of them have since been promoted and reassigned to top command and administrative positions. The main architect and beneficiary, Gen. Bright Rwamirama who was at the time the Director of Finance is now a Cabinet Minister.

The Hague based ICC trial of LRA's Dominic Ongwen received testimonies in defence of the accused that evidently portrayed the northern counter-insurgency efforts as business driven. It cited the creation of Ghost Soldiers and inflation of logistical requirements by top Commanders of the government forces for personal benefits as the reason the war took decades to end. Adam Branch, who is a lecturer of African History at Cambridge University and the Director of Center for African Studies, had been to northern Uganda for four months in 2003 to research on the subject and testified in favor of the accused (Dominic Ongwen). Earlier, in January 2017, the Author of the book LRA MYTH AND REALITY, Tim Allen who testified for the Prosecution, contended that "After 2002, half of the soldiers were Ghosts."

The situation pertaining to abuse of office, corruption and outright theft of public resources has not changed since time in memorial. The only difference is that unlike in the past when such scandals would reach the public domain, the regime has managed to take control of media houses, the quality of the local journalism is at its lowest, but more so, the upright security personnel who would, out of good faith, volunteer such information, have lost the battle and either surrendered or lost the battle ground. Others were simply systematically sidelined from the mainstream security services. The most recent case is that of Gen. Angina who fell victim to the army pensions and gratuity scam.

Museveni has been thriving on letting his top army officers swindle huge sums of public coffers in return for personal loyalty, has provided them with a smokescreen of the so-called  'classified defence expenditures.' That way, military expenditures, much of which end up into the pockets of individual army officers and other regime functionaries is not subjected to public accountability mechanisms.  Consequently, these individuals have become the richest in the country. The vice has since creeped from the army and the the intelligence services to the police and other security outfits. That way, the beneficiaries have amassed incredible wealth at the expense of the ordinary soldiers, other security personnel and the taxpayers.

In the same regard, when the opportunity to distribute the 59bn shillings relief food presented itself, Museveni grabbed it to further appease his soldiers. His top sycophant, Gen. Tumwine was put in charge of a multi-billion shillings budget. Tumwine was reinforced by Brig. Jack Bakasumba from the Police and Gen. Kyanda from the army. Before being seconded to the police, Bakasumba had been the Commandant of the Peace Operations Support Centre at Bingo where he was cited in acts of soliciting for bribes from those seeking to be included in the AMISOM contingent; let alone being a beneficiary of inflated infrastructure developments at the facility. On his part, Gen. Kyanda had just resurfaced from a diversionary suspension following his deep involvement in the fake arms deal involving a Polish arms company. The police personnel deployed for relief food distribution are said to have been paid only a small portion of their operational allowances. Obviously, the situation is not different from the army, Prisons and LDU personnel.

With the sycophant and incompetent Gen. Tumwine in charge and helped by his assistants, Bakasumba and Kyanda, no wonder the food distribution exercise was bound to fail miserably. The over three decades old military corruption must have been at play in the COVID-19 supplementary budget cash bonanza. At the district level, Museveni's RDCs and DISOs have been cited and in some instances captured on camera soliciting for and receiving bribes in order to render services to citizens in the COVID-19 distress. No wonder the regime has now relinquished the relief food provision and distribution to religious and other civil society organisations and they are doing it faster and in an orderly manner.

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Rehema
Patriot in Kampala,East Africa:Assalamu Alaikum

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