By Mulengera Reporters
Appearing on Radio Simba’s very popular Olutindo program Monday evening, Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze reflected on high levels of infrastructural development she saw in Western Uganda last week when she travelled to Mitooma for fallen NUP Deputy President Jolly Mugisha’s burial.
Ably moderated by Peter Kibaazo, Nambooze said she was astonished to see that the quality of marram roads in even remote parts of Ankole was way much better than more exposed areas of Kampala Metropolitan Area including her own Mukono Municipality. She wondered how a place like Mitooma can have better motorable roads than her Municipality which has the Kampala-Jinja highway which facilitates the movement of goods and persons relating to international trading activities between Uganda and Kenya.
To his credit, being a knowledgeable and worthy moderator, Kibaazo pushed back making it clear to Nambooze that in her Mukono area, roads get cracked up and dilapidated rather very quickly because of the busy economic activities including being frequently used by heavy trucks carrying tones of goods which isn’t the case with much of Ankole. The sub region has significant economic activities and movement of vehicles but less frequently than is the case with Mukono Municipality and other parts of Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area.
Nambooze also claimed that, because leaders from there are united, know what they want and speak with one voice when demanding service delivery, Western Uganda has more service delivery-enhancing administrative units (namely villages, parishes, wards, town boards, town councils and Municipalities) than more populous regions like Buganda. That in most cases, Buganda administrative units are densely more populated but have fewer Municipalities and town councils (through which resources are allocated) because Kabaka’s region isn’t properly led at the level of elected leaders.
Nambooze added that this failure to articulately push Buganda’s agenda is the reason why Uganda’s central region has MPs like Medard Segona with a constituency which is home to between 500,000 and 800,000 residents. Nambooze wondered why Busiro East or even Kyadondo North (both from Wakiso district) should continue having one Member of Parliament yet they are densely populated. She contrasted this with some electoral areas, outside Buganda, where an MP can represent as few as 2,000 voters!
She asserted that what she saw in Western Uganda made her feel sad and weep for her own Buganda region where even in the Kampala Metropolitan Area, the state of public infrastructure and general service delivery remain so deplorable. She said there is need for the elected leaders from the sub region to learn to rally their people to speak with one voice while demanding for and asserting their right to better delivery of services and other public goods.
Nambooze asserted that in Western Uganda it’s possible to find a parish or ward whose population is less than what you can find within a village in Buganda. She asserted that having more parishes, villages and other administrative units has enabled Western Uganda to always have a lion’s share of the PDM funds (because each parish is entitled to Shs100m regardless of population), hospitals, road infrastructure funds allocation, schools and other public amenities. She said from what she saw, it appears in Western region, every collection of small shops becomes a town board or town council and thereby entitling community members to higher budget allocation to finance access to public goods.
She asserted that in their case as politicians from Buganda, they have always discouraged such creation of many administrative units because they have always been honest and decent politicians which is why Medard Segona wasn’t that enthusiastic when then Local Government Minister Adolf Mwesige proposed the splitting of his Busiro East into two Parliamentary constituencies. The same happened with Kyadondo North (later renamed Nansana Municipality) which missed out on being split into two Parliamentary constituencies because the area elected politicians didn’t render Adolf Mwesige the political support he required.
Nambooze added that now time had come for the decent and reasonable common sense politicians from Buganda region to re-learn and unlearn and begin to behave like counterparts from Western Uganda and elsewhere by beginning to demanding more administrative units because people in government have proved to be incapable of any shame when it comes to creating such administrative units even in areas where creation of the same is unviable and doesn’t make economic sense.
Nambooze said this is something the leadership of Buganda caucus under Muwanga Kivumbi ought to have realized and wokened up to long time ago but this hasn’t happened “because I think we have been just sleeping which is why I ask you [Peter Kibazo] to begin pressurizing my caucus Chairman Muwanga Kivumbi to begin waking up to that reality.” Nambooze asserted that unless that happens, there is no way people from Buganda region are going to ever catch up with their counterparts from other regions when it comes to meaningful access to public goods and services which the state of Uganda is mandated to deliver to all citizens equally. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at [email protected]).
