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This is part
of an open letter former President Apollo Milton Obote's son, Jimmy Akena,
wrote to President Yoweri Museveni on August 19, 2002, responding to a
July 20, 2002 letter President Museveni had written to LRA rebel leaders
Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti.
On the
electrification of Kitgum; I am intrigued that you can cite this as an
achievement of your government. On April 12, 1982, the Uganda People's
Congress (UPC) government presented to the people of Uganda and to the
international community a document entitled "Recovery Programme, 1982-84";
on October 24, 1983 the UPC government presented the "Revised Recovery
Programme" which contained the programmes and project profiles that it
intended to carry out.
Within the
project profiles you will find that under the Project Code ME 03 entitled
"Rural Power Distribution" which described the putting on line of 14 rural
districts and sub-district headquarters.
Your
government, after abandoning the doomed and crippling barter trade
economic policy decided in 1987 to plagiarise the entire revised UPC
document which was due to be published in September 1985 and renamed it
the Rehabilitation and Development Plan and published the plagiarisation
in 1987/88 whereby the only claim to originality was described in the
introduction as "In comparison to the Revised Recovery Programme
(published in 1983), significant improvements have been made to the format
of the Project Profiles for Projects in the Investment Plan.
The profiles
are presented by sector and sub-sector, rather than ordered by code
number, so that government's priorities in a particular field are
apparent".
When in fact
paragraph 83 of the June 1985 Budget Speech clearly states "Mr Speaker,
work on the Revision of the Recovery Programme has been completed. This
programme will be presented to the people of Uganda and the Consultative
Group Meeting during the course of this year".
Therefore
even the minimal changes in your Rehabilitation and Development Plan were
the brainchild of the UPC government. This goes to emphasise my point that
all the said projects were the brainchild of the UPC which we see now
being claimed 17 years after the UPC left office by opportunists and
politically bankrupt people.
The only area
within the project profiles where I am prepared to give the devil his due
is that many of the projects costs were drastically revised upwards
(perhaps due mainly to inflation.
But since the
implementation has been very poor and much money has been squandered and
stolen without projects being completed leads one to believe that the
costs were deliberately and corruptly inflated.
The
plagiarised Project ME 03 states that the "EEC has financed 7 of the 24
routes/scheme including the completed Lira-Apac route [completed in
1982/83] for which a loan of ECU 5.9 million from the EEC was provided in
mid-1984.
The seven
funded schemes are: Lira-Apac; Lira-Kitgum; Kasese-Katwe-Kabale;
Kagamba-Rukungiri; Mbarara-Ntungamu; Mbarara-Ibanda; and Gulu-Moyo. All
the materials for the 7 funded schemes have been purchased and have
arrived in the country.
Construction
has started and 40 km on the Lira-Kitgum line has been done but was
suspended owing to insecurity in the area.
Instead work has been
shifted to schemes in the western region where construction on the
Kasese-Katwe-Kabale; Mbarara-Ntungamu, Kagamba-Rukungiri, and
Mbarara-Ibanda is in progress.
In view of
these documented facts, I fail to see where and why you wish to claim
credit for the electrification of Kitgum. The project was conceived,
birthed and nurtured when you were "engaged in treasonable acts of waging
war against the elected government of Uganda".
You also
attempted and even succeeded in destroying some electricity transmission
equipment which at one point plunged Mulago Hospital in
darkness.
The funding of the project was secured while you were a
refugee in Sweden and the process of bringing in all the materials had
absolutely nothing to do with you or your dictatorship.
The delay in
implementing this project and many others since January 1986 under the
guise of insecurity which the the then rebel National Resistance Army
itself initiated, and the diverting of many projects away from the
intended recipients in the north to other parts of the country, may be
some of the reasons why there are those who feel that the people of
northern Uganda are not treated as true Ugandans.
Another
project in the agricultural sector which, under the UPC was for increasing
food production and family incomes of small holder farmers and fishermen
through the availability of basic inputs for crop, livestock and fisheries
production also suffered the same NRM lethargy and NRA inspired
"insecurity".
The project
known as "Integrated Food Production and Rural Development in Eastern and
Northern Uganda" under the Project Code AG 04. The project, among other
things, was expected to in the long term produce an increase of 5% per
annum for local consumptions and at a sustained level.
The first
phase of the project saw a rapid increase in food production and resulted
in the farmers selling some of their produce to the WFP for their
distribution efforts in the region.
The second phase, which involved
other development aspects, received full funding in February 1985. The
only addition made on this project by your dictatorship was the final
sentence which states
"The project
has progressed slowly due to delays in the procurement process and
insecurity in some project areas." Other stagnated projects include the
Rehabilitation of the Cotton Industry AG 03 and AG 27.
Project AG 03
was more concerned with the rehabilitation of ginneries and the project
funds were being handled by the Co-operative Bank for funds from the
African Development Bank (ADB) and Uganda Commercial Bank for IDA credits
and funds.
Project AG 27 was focused on increasing production and
took into cognition of the fact that that the majority of cotton growers
were the small scale farmers growing an "average of 0.4 to 1.2 hectares
each" and that previously "up to 60% of farm holdings have depended on
cotton for cash earning."
The UPC
government sought to improve "producer incentives and to align producer
prices more closely with world market forces." Whereby the said "price
adjustments have provided much increased returns to farmers" and helped
"to make rehabilitation of perennial crops profitable" coupled with a
"policy of paying farmers cash on delivery together with significant
prices rises" which provided added financial incentives to farmers.
Yet your new
cotton policy totally ignores the realities and is centred on a core of
100 large scale farmers each with 500 acres, could this imply that your
intention is to utilise the land from where you have "evacuate[d]" all the
small scale farmers? Or you assume that by employing the suffering people
as cotton pickers you would be doing them a great service?
Mr
Akena lives in Lusaka, Zambia with his father, the former president of
Uganda.
(Next
week look out for the section on the insurgency in northern Uganda -
Ed).
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