By Mulengera Reporters
Speaking to hundreds of Baganda Nkoba Zambogo leaders who on Monday converged at Makerere CEDAT Conference Hall, Deputy IGG Annie Muhairwe called upon Ugandans to shun politicians who are well known for being corrupt as they cast their vote on Thursday.
Muhairwe said it was demoralizing that politicians who everyone knows to be corrupt are most likely going to very easily win their races for Parliamentary seats yet this would have been the best opportunity and timing to leverage the election period to make them pay for their sins.
She said that Ugandan voters can sometimes act very ironically even when the way they vote turns out to be detrimental to their own interests as citizens.
She said that corruption constrains service delivery and the ordinary voter, who gets deprived of services, is the biggest loser yet the same voters don’t realize that the voting exercise is the best opportunity for them to enforce accountability onto their elected leaders who act inappropriately and engage in misappropriation of public funds and resources.
PURPOSE OF THE MEETING:
Muhairwe was here to primarily interact with Zambogo leaders from the different Universities with a view of mentoring them into future leaders and more responsible citizens of tomorrow. She thanked Baganda Nkoba Zambogo General Secretary Christine Ndagire, her mentee, for inviting and interesting her into the Zambogo fraternity.
Through the operations of Christian Lawyers Fraternity, for which she was President until some months ago, Muhairwe (who left University 24 years ago) has been involved in efforts to mentor hundreds of young Ugandan professionals. That’s how Ndagire, a 3rd year law student at KIU, came to be her mentee. And like Zambogo, her Christian Lawyers Fraternity has a presence at all tertiary institutions of higher learning throughout Uganda.
Muhairwe said that she was ready to continue mentoring future leaders and responsible citizens of Uganda and walked the talk by randomly taking up 20 Zambogo members for mentoring from the Monday gathering at Makerere’ CEDAT Conference Hall, where Gen Christopher Ddamulira (the AIGP in the Uganda Police where she heads the crime intelligence directorate based at Kololo) was one of the outstanding speakers.
Muhairwe will be mentoring and professionally nurturing the 20 Baganda Nkoba Zambogo members through their University training into their world of work after completing campus.
They were selected on first-come first-serve basis through stampeding to register on the expression of interest forms that were provided at the Monday conference that was broadly meant to enable Zambogo leaders and members to understand the role young people are supposed to play in ensuring that the Thursday elections is peaceful and successfully concluded.
The other speakers included Pentecostal Born Again leader bishop Joshua Lwere, Gen Christopher Ddamulira and the new IGG Justice Aisha Batala Naluzzi. Besides Muhairwe and Naluzzi, Ombudsman Affairs Director Savio Kakooza Nte Nsibe was the other big person from the IG who participated and spoke at the half day event.
Careful not to sound political, Muhairwe implored the hundreds of young people in the audience to deliberately participate in the Thursday voting and purpose to vote for responsible leaders who understand what is at stake and know what it takes to ensure that this country called Uganda continues to be effectively governed. She asserted that voting wisely is the only way every citizen can ensure that Uganda continues to be culturally inclusive, politically peaceful and economically prosperous.
She commended Gen Ddamulira for coming on board to team up with the IG to ensure that the Monday event organizers were logistically supported to be able to successfully pull it off. Saying there will be huge consequences for individuals and for the country, Muhairwe implored the young people to take the Thursday voting very seriously, not lightly.
“Hold all your leaders to a high standard as you cast your vote on Thursday.” She also called on Zambogo members to always be patriotic and love their country by using social media to promote positivity about Uganda to the rest of the world instead of getting annoyed because of their respective personal struggles and resorting to posting negative things about Uganda.
“You may be angry at one individual leader and resort to posting negative things, which demonize the whole country yet it’s the only home we all have. When you amplify negativity, you scare off tourists and would-be investors yet we need them to come to amplify job creation for you and your other siblings and cousins.”
She also called on the youths to appreciate the difference between politicians who are popular and those who have the credentials required to effectively steer and govern the country. She thanked her boss the IGG, who she personally interested in the Monday event, for taking time off her busy schedule to prioritize and drive to Makerere to interact with and mentor the young people of Uganda.
Naluzzi was only notified about the event on Friday evening but altered her Monday engagements in order to slot in being at the Zambogo event. Muhairwe also thanked the IGG for her readiness, as head of the IG institution, to leverage on the outreach function resources to commit to have many more similar engagements involving even larger groups of Baganda Nkoba Zambogo members at the subsequent mentoring conferences and sessions.
Muhairwe implored the young people to become more enthusiastic to participate in such seminars because the resulting networking benefits that come with participation can expose one to life-changing opportunities. She said that she participated in many such seminars when still at the University more than 20 years ago and doesn’t regret anything because of the many life-changing post-campus opportunities she got exposed to. She said the same of her boss, the IGG Justice Aisha Naluzzi Batala.
To the excitement of the Baganda Nkoba Zambogo leaders in the audience, Muhairwe endeavored to address the gathering in Luganda for more than 50% of the speaking time she was allocated. She said she is able to speak such flawless Luganda because she grew up here, having lost her dad when she was just two years old.
He was disappeared as part of the broader and rampant political instability that characterized the pre-1986 Uganda. Armed men, who were agents of government, stormed their home, beat up and tortured her dad in front of his wife and children before forcefully dragging him away, never to be seen again.
Muhairwe said that reflecting on past occurrences like that one makes it even more compelling for the young people (aged 35 years and below, constituting 75% of Uganda’s population) to critically reflect as they prepare to go cast their vote this coming Thursday 15th January. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
