By Mulengera Reporters
While speaking Saturday on Kabaka’s CBS radio, Buvuma County MP Robert Migadde Ndugwa explained why he thinks Muwanga Kivumbi failed to offer effective leadership and the once very vibrant Buganda Caucus in Parliament died in his hands.
Muwanga became Caucus leader (2021-2026) after his NUP party won the majority MP Seats in Buganda. However, his tenure was regretted by many as one during which the Caucus’ relevancy greatly diminished.
Migadde, who was part of the executive that preceded Muwanga’s reign, said that in his view, he saw and knows why Muwanga ended up failing. Firstly, he said the outgoing Butambala County MP was indecisive and too fearful of the NUP foot soldiers and bloggers.
He recalled that during one of the very first Caucus meetings Muwanga convened, members failed to agree on how the region would benefit a lot more from the PDM cash grants. These are given out per parish and there was concern that Buganda had few parishes with a lot of people yet other regions had many more parishes habited by very few people.
That to get more money coming to the region, there was need to lobby Museveni to authorize the creation of more parishes in Buganda but Muwanga and majority NUP members objected to this fearing it would cause them PR and political messaging problems since the opposition had all along been opposed to creation of more administrative units. Migadde said this remained unresolved because Muwanga never convened more meetings to specifically follow up on this issue.
The second issue that demystified Muwanga, according to Migadde, related to the question of accountability. He said there was a meeting during which members, especially those from the NRM side, asked hard questions regarding what the caucus leadership was doing with money that the accounts department of Parliament was monthly deducting from their pay and remitting it to the caucus account. Migadde said there was no satisfactory explanation, which caused members’ trust and interest in the caucus to diminish.
The other divisive idea, he reminisced, related to the need to meeting President Museveni and discuss service delivery and infrastructural development in Buganda. Migadde said that Muwanga Kivumbi originally admitted this was a good idea but developed cold feet after fellow NUP MPs raised fears that going for such a meeting would cause them to be destroyed and devoured by NUP foot soldiers and bloggers like Fred Lumbuye.
Migadde, who ended up teaming up with others from NRM to form their own Buganda caucus faction christened ‘Buganda for Museveni,’ seemed excited about the prospect of the ruling party reclaiming the leadership of the mainstream Buganda caucus in Parliament now that majority MPs from Buganda now subscribe to NRM. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
