Ochan
At 05:12 PM 3/12/2004 -0500, you wrote:
Mr. Otim as they say the truth is bitter. What has dates got to do with it. The Ugandan who posted the article below is being SINCERELY HONEST. YOU ARE EMBARACED BECAUSE HIS ASSERTIONS BLOW YOU AND YOUR UPC SYCOPHANT'S ARGUMENTS THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF UGANDA HAS AN AGENDA TO UNDERMINE THE DEVELOPEMENT OF THE NORTH. THIS PATRIOTIC UGANDAN IS CLEARLY STATING THE FACTS AS THEY ARE, WHICH ARE THAT KONY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INSECURITY IN NORTH...WHEN KONY WAS INACTIVE PEACE AND PROSPERITY EXISTED IN THE NORTH. THIS PATRIOTIC UGANDA IS NOT IN CALIFORNIA OR WASHINGTON OR CANADA, BUT ON THE GROUND IN UGANDA.
MR. OTTO IS ALSO EXPOSING THE REAL MOTIVES OF SOME NORTHERNERS IN CREATING MAYHEM AND INSECURITY IN THE NORTH WHICH IS BLACKMAIL. KONY AND MOST OF THE ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDISTS ARE BASICALLY CAUSING MAYHEM IN THE NORTH SO AS TO CORNER GOVERNMENT INTO GIVING THEM SOME CASH. BUT FOR KONY THE NORTH WOULD HAVE BEEN AS DEVELOPED AS THE NORTH AND OF COURSE PEOPLE LIKE MATEK AND MR. OCHAN WOULDN'T HAVE A PLATFORM UPON WHICH TO CRITICIZE GOVERNMENT, MAKING THEM AND THEIR UPC IRRELIVANT, HENCE THERE SUPPORT FOR KONY. NETTERS I HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU THAT THE LINK BETWEEN UPC AND LRA WILL SOON BE REVEALED (UPC = LRA). THE TRUTH SHALL AND ALWAYS PREVAILS. I SALUTE MR. GEORGE OTTO FOR TELLING THE TRUTH AND THE WHOLE TRUTH FOR A CHANGE. HE HAS DONE HIS COUNTRY AND REGION PROUD. IT JUST GOES TO SHOW THAT A FEW MOUTH PIECES WITH A FOUL AGENDA ARE MIS-REPRESENTING THE NORTH.
From: Ochan Otim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: ugnet_: interesting view of a northern Ugandan Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 12:17:13 -0800
Notice that this posting avoids - deliberately or not - giving the date when this old material was written and first made public!! To me it tells a lot about the intention of the messenger.
Ochan Otim
At 02:54 PM 3/12/2004 -0500, you wrote:Underdevelopment in NorthernUganda George Otto Fellow Ugandans,
I once more thank all of you who have continued to show interest in the recent events in the northern part of our country.
I have noticed in some recent postings that the issue of underdevelopment in Northern Uganda keeps recurring. It has been given as one of the possible reasons for the insurgency in northern Uganda. I have chosen to once again "stick out my neck" and share with my fellow Ugandans my views about this subject.
There is no doubt that Gulu and Kitgum districts have not enjoyed the same level of economic progress like some other regions of Uganda have ever since independence; and probably before.
While there are many reasons for this, I want to submit to you all that in my opinion, the single largest reason for this sorry state of affairs over the last ten years is the INSECURITY IN THE REGION. Attempts to assist economic development in both the public and private sectors have either failed or stalled because of insecurity in the region. The following examples illustrate this point.
PUBLIC SECTOR
A few years ago, the present government of Uganda initiated the Northern Uganda Reconstruction Programme (NURP). This was to to be the largest single public reconstruction project ever in Uganda. Funding was secured from the donor community to the tune of about 100 million US $. An Acholi professional (Dr. Okech) was appointed to be the Director of this programme. The plan was to rehabilitate roads, water supply, electricity, hospitals, health centres and dispensaries, schools, etc.
When Dr. Okech (who had been recruited from outside Uganda) went to take up his office in Gulu, he was scared by the activities of the rebels. He therefore decided to set up office in Kampala temporarily. They are still bogged down in Kampala; unable to start the real work in Gulu because of the persistent insecurity.
Many people in Uganda, including some in cabinet, have been saying that if the north cannot get their act together, then the project should be re-assigned to other areas. I am told that the President is refusing to reassign the project to other regions. I am sure that if he were to do so, he would be accused of diverting development elsewhere.
In this case, those of Kony are the ones who have up to now prevented this programme from taking off. In their minds and that of their supporters, they are proud to have embarrassed the Government of Uganda. What they do not realise is that they have denied a whole region some economic hope. Then they turn around and blame the government for marginalising their people, for taking development elsewhere,etc. In this case, who has really hurt the people of northern Uganda?
In spite of all these, some things have been done. The roads have been repaired in both Gulu and Kitgum districts. For example, the road from Gulu to Moroto, which had deteriorated in the eighties , has been repaired. Bus service from Gulu to Moroto is now possible. In my own village, we now have more water than we have ever had. A new health centre is under construction; financed partly privately and partly by Government. Even communication has improved. In the trading centres, you can now go and make a radio call to Kampala (for a fee) and contact your relatives in Kampala, Jinja, etc. Recently the TV transmitter in Lira was repaired after 17 years; the people of Lira can now receive Uganda Television. Electricity from Jinja is being extended from Lira to Kitgum. The railway line to Gulu and Pakwach is operational. Telephone service to Gulu has been improved so that one can phone Gulu easily. A public fax in Gulu allows people there to send faxes and receive faxes worlwide. A new University for Agriculture and Food Sciences is to open in Gulu soon with the help of American funding.
PRIVATE SECTOR
In the new Uganda, the stimulus and engine of economic growth is private-sector investment. As you know, Government is trying to get out of doing business; something which in my opinion is long overdue.
The economic growth that the southern and western parts of the country have experienced in the last ten years have mostly been as a result of private investments. Contrary to what some people believe, the majority of the investments have been from Ugandans. If you look at the list of projects that have been licensed by the Uganda Investment Authority and are operational in Uganda today, the majority are Ugandan owned. The factories and buildings are definitely not government owned.The government did not give these buildings and factories to people in the south and west. These people worked hard and built them. Incidentally, some of these factories in the south are owned by northerners like Cecilia Ogwal, the UPC iron-lady.
The question then arises as to why Northern Uganda has not attracted as many private investors as Kampala, Jinja, Mukono, Entebbe, Mbarara etc.?
One of the major reasons is the insecurity which has plagued our region for the past decade. This is in spite of some incentives that the Uganda Investment Authority has put in place to encourage development in the north. For example, if you set up a factory in northern Uganda, you get a bigger tax break, you get subsidised interest rates (if you borrow some of the money).
The same incentives apply to Mbarara, Kabale, Fort Portal etc. So it is not correct to say that the Government has favoured other areas more than others. It is the private investors who have chosen to invest their money in safer areas. The chairman of Northern Uganda Manufacurers' Association , for example, has built his factory in Kampala instead of the north to avoid the insecurity.
Even when patriotic northerners have attempted to invest in the north, they have had to pull out because of the same problem of insecurity.
The case of Vitafoam Uganda Limited illustrates the point I'm making above. Vitafoam, based in Jinja, is the largest and oldest manufacturer of foam mattresses in Uganda. The owners are from Gulu and Kitgum districts. A few years ago they decided to set up another factory in Gulu to try and take development home. Funding was obtained and the factory installed in Gulu. Soon after the factory started manufacturing in Gulu, Kony an his predecessors started terrorising the district. Mattresses could not be delivered to other parts of the country reliably. There were so many problems as a result of the insecurity that the owners decided to uproot the factory and put it in Jinja. Today, the two factoies run side by side in Jinja.
Now if even northerners who have the money to invest are afraid to invest there, how can we expect people from other parts of Uganda to go and invest their hard-earned money there? We cannot surely expect the Government to force investors to come to northern Uganda.
On a smaller scale, there are many northerners who have in the last few years built houses in the Kampala area because they are scared of building at home. I happen to be one of them. It is not the government that diverted us from building in the north; it is Kony and his followers. Then they turn around and say that the government is developing the south at the expense of the north. The government did not give us these houses.
In spite of all the problems with the insecurity, people have made a good effort to develop their area. Both Gulu and Kitgum have new buildings. A new 3 star hotel has opened in Kitgum; better and bigger than Government-owned Hilltop Hotel. Agricultural production is on the increase. Gulu district today produces quite a bit of rice. As well the production of simsim (sesame) has gone up so much. Recently one Canadian company imported a million kilos of simsim from northern Uganda; after paying the farmers cash for their produce. The production of cotton in Kitgum district has gone up since the prices were de-regulated. Public transportation in the region had also improved until the recent insurgency. You can take a bus from Gulu to Kampala and back to Gulu in one day. All these are private efforts. The government did not give these buses or buildings to people in Lira, Gulu or Kitgum.
The way insecurity adversely affects development is perhaps most clearly illustrated if one compares the recent growth of Gulu and Kitgum to that of Lira and Apac; both towns in northern Uganda. The Langi in Apac and Lira districts may well prefer that Obote was still the President of Uganda, but they are smart and pragmatic enough to realise that it is unlikely to happen soon. When the so-called rebels from Acholi tried to pass through there in 1987, they immediately chased them. They knew that no war could bring them peace and development. Instead, they embarked on doing their best to develop their region. Lira town has enjoyed a higher rate of growth than even Mbarara in the last few years. As one of the industrialists from there told me last year, "we cannot afford to wait for Obote to come back before we try and develop our area". He told me that if Obote were to visit Lira today, he would get lost because of the number of new buildings in the town.The growth in Lira has been a result of peace and private-sector investment. The government of Uganda did not give the people of Lira money to put up those buildings.
Gulu and Kitgum districts, however, have faced one form of insecurity or another ever since 1986. As I mentioned earlier, the majority of people in the district do not support the LRA and its predecessors. It is the remnants of the UNLA and some of their political masters who have plunged our region into this darkness. These are soldiers who were so used to looting at roadblocks that the thought of living in a lawful society where law and order prevails was too much for them to bear. Some of their political leaders were so used to looting the national treasury that the thought of holding regular jobs and earning a living like their fellow Ugandans was too much to bear. They are used to being paid for getting an allocation of sugar, beer, foreign exchange, etc. They are used to being paid for allocation papers for lorries, pickups, buses, etc. They are used to throwing people in detention; then asking relatives to pay a bribe to have them released.
They cannot now claim that they so care about the welfare of the common man in the village that they are willing to fight and die for it. During Obote II, the people in the village were just as poor. Why did they not do something about it while they had national power? They were so drunk with power that they could not see the suffering of their own people. Now they want to try and convince the people in the village that if they get national power, they will deliver heaven to the north! In the meantime, they are trying to deliver hell to the north by their acts of brutality.
Many of their so-called leaders are simply trying to find a bargaining tool so that Museveni offers them something. We have already seen this happen before. Those who preceded Kony and caused so much grief in the north subsequently settled for as little as $6,000 US; plus or minus a plane ticket. They now live in Kampala, afraid to visit the beloved homeland in the north that they fought so hard for. This is how cheap these people think the lives of their brothers and sisters in the north are. I do not want to get personal, but enough is enough. If any of their supporters doubt this, I will name some former senior Obote II/ Tito Okello officials who have settled for petty amounts of money and now live peacefully in Kampala after causing our people so much grief. No wonder those of Kony want to join them.
I want to finish by suggesting that we from the north take some of the responsibility for the lack of progress in our area, instead of always blaming the government. We must undertake to work hard and develop our own area before we can expect investors, local or foreign, to come and invest in our area. We should stop trying to look at the central government as our only source of development. Let us stop thinking that the only way to develop our area is to seize control of the national government. If anything, the experience of Obote II and Tito Okello has shown that having leaders like those from our region is a hazard to economic development. Even the few who thought they benefited in 1981-1986 have nothing to show for it today; except bitterness towards the people who chased them away from power. Instead of resenting the development in other areas, let us learn from them and develop our own area. After all, we are blessed with plenty of fertile land. Now that government does not control prices of produce, and products can be sold worldwide, let us get to work as soon as possible. Let us not allow the few disgraced OboteII/Tito Okello officials to ride on our backs and lives to get big jobs and some money from President Museveni. Let us refuse to be misled, and let us hope peace prevails in northern Uganda. Our people more than deserve it.
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Ochan Otim
NB: I hope you will find time to read and sign a petition to stop the Northern Uganda carnage at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/savacoli/petition.html
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The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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Ochan Otim
NB: I hope you will find time to read and sign a petition to stop the Northern Uganda carnage at: http://www.petitiononline.com/savacoli/petition.html
-------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
