{UAH} CONGS NICHOLAS OPIYO!

Yesterdays dropping of the money laundering charges against human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo (picture attached) is a right step in establishing a sound new working environment between civil society, development partners and the people of Uganda.

It is also important that in submission and/or atonement to the nation, Mr. Opiyo publicly clears the air about his finances. After the accusations he faced, the public needs to be sure that his projects are not just a lucrative self-enrichment scheme using the poverty of Ugandans, nor a means to facilitate foreign usurption of our democracy however fledgeling it is.

You see, one of Africa's biggest problems is our elites and leaders who are ready to do anything, even sell off their entire country on the cheap just to please rich foreign interests, mostly Western countries.

These elites of ours perpetually crave for white acceptance, white endorsement, white approval, or white recognition, and will even go against their own just for that selfish end, each one doing it for themselves but the total sum of their efforts ends up defining Africa in the international media. That is where our nations get divided, and those who choose nationalism get defamed abroad.

These elites are the ones supposed to know better, yet this sellout behaviour is mostly found in our scholars, our researchers, our media professionals, our foreign funded organizations, our foreign funded politicians, their foreign funded political parties, and Africa's foreign funded democracy.

There is an honest discussion that we are mysteriously avoiding, yet we need to start having with ourselves, possibly even in the next IPOD summit of political parties debating "our democracy" which in reality is under the influence of other countries money, thereby establishing an undiagnosed tag of war between for example the people of Uganda on one side, and donors on the other using aid to define the destiny, economic interests and trajectory of African countries.

In any case this is a matter that needs to be better legislated to eliminate conflicting interests, leaving only the sovereignty of the people. Pouring foreign money into a country's democracy is a criminal offence in the very democracies that pour money into Uganda's democracy. That is why I branded it "Embezzling Africa's democracy".

Meanwhile, individuals like Nicholas Opiyo and civil society in Uganda have today a unique opportunity to start a new working era for development partnerships that will better promote individual freedoms, human rights, societal peace, accountable governance, democracy & economic development across the country, possibly even across the region, for the true benefit of the people.

Ultimately we have to simultaneously envision, and work towards a time when we can achieve this without political interference packaged as foreign aid. The people of Uganda and Africa at large deserve to see any organization, political party, or state institutions that presently have a pragmatic self-reliance timetable with related steps for the short term, midterm and long term future.

I thought I heard 20 years ago Uganda declaring to the world that "We want trade. Not aid"!?!

What happened?Weld move past empty slogans and walk our talk.

For the record, if we had made that policy materialize, lawyer Nicholas Opiyo would not have faced the money-laundering accusations he faced. In fact the only reason we all know about one Nicholas Opiyo is because of foreign aid. Without it, his NGO Chapter Four cannot even exist. The same is true for countless other local and international organizations who ask for funds abroad for the poor, an estimated 80% of which vanishes in administrative costs, ostensibly milking the poverty of the people of Uganda, sometimes just to keep themselves in employment while wearing a sheep skin of humane intellectualist integrity when invited to a TV talk show. An abuse against the people if you ask me.

Another thing I also noticed in this Opiyo case is that Acholis, even their Acholi parliamentary group, didn't cry tribalism this time around following his arrest. I wonder why?

Maybe they fell silent when they heard the shocking amounts of dollars and Euros that "ladit" Opiyo from Gulu was "eating alone", and hadn't told anyone that he had been regularly receiving in secret Chapter Four accounts for all these years in their name, them being part of "the empoverished people of Uganda" whom NGO's use to get crispy foreign currency bundles from abroad then first head to enjoy their favourite chips and Kentucky chicken with chilli plus coleslaw.

I am however glad that there is an effort to see that all NGO projects have a start and end date, plus that their declared action, including for women and children across the country, has a tangible, accountable, meaningful and sustainable social and macro-economic impact.

Signed: Mr. Hussein Lumumba Amin

Tuesday 14th, September 2021.

Kampala, Uganda.

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