Prof Kanyeihamba accuses NRM of making silent pacts with big thieves

“We had to reconcile the country at the expense of corruption,” Prof Kanyeihamba said during the seminar held on August 24, 1994.

Participants in the seminar, which was sponsored by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and the British Overseas Development Administration, were mainly senior academics from Uganda and abroad.

The seminar was opened by the chairman of the Constituent Assembly, James Wapakhabulo.

In his remarks, Wapakhabulo who went on to become Speaker of the Sixth Parliament before being appointed National Political Commissar and minister of Foreign Affairs, stressed that the major challenge in the transition to democracy at the time was the creation of a political and administrative system that would be responsive to the needs of the society.

It should be noted that Wapakhabulo died on March 27, 2004, just under 10 years after the controversial seminar.

Drawing fire
The Monitor edition of Wednesday, August 30, 1994, reported that Prof Kanyeihamba’s remarks elicited outrage, but that he insisted on the need for the NRM to co-habit with big thieves. That, according to the newspaper, prompted Prof Ginyera Pinchwa to demand that Kanyeihamba withdraws the statement.

“NRM should be educated that if it finds [Prof Apolo] Nsibambi (a Muganda federalist) corrupt, they should remove him and replace him with another Muganda of the same background than tolerating corruption,” Prof Pinchwa demanded.

The newspaper, however, reported that Prof Kanyeihamba who was subsequently appointed a judge of the Supreme Court, had already left the conference hall.

In defence of Obote
The newspaper reported that Prof Pinchwa then turned to defending former president Milton Obote who had been deposed by his General’s Tito Okello Lutwa and Bazillion Olara Okello in July 1985.

The Obote regime, the professor was quoted to have said, turned brutal because many people were plotting to overthrow him. 

It should remembered that on June 11, 1985, less than two months before Obote was deposed, the international human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, released a 64-page report in which it accused the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) of committing serious crimes against the civilian populations in Luweero Triangle where it was battling rebels of the National Resistance Army (NRA) and in other parts of the country where it was battling other rebel groups like the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF).

The report accused the Obote II government and the UNLA of, among other crimes, harassment of supporters of the opposition Democratic Party (DP) and Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM); torture in military garrisons; unlawful detentions in military barracks and secret prisons; and carrying out extrajudicial killings.

Prof Ginyera Pinchwa is, however, reported to have reminded the audience of the NRM’s record of having had more people tried for treason than any other government in Uganda’s history.

“So Obote was not the only elephant in the China shop,” Prof Pinchwa said.

NRM under microscope
According to the same newspaper, irked by Prof Kanyeihamba’s remarks, Prof Foster Byarugaba of the Department of Political Science at Makerere University, criticised the NRM, saying it was high time it stopped singing about its “correct line” if it was true that it was deliberately protecting thieves within its ranks.

Prof Byarugaba who had earlier on submitted a paper titled ‘Civil Service and Parastatal Reform in Uganda’ blamed the failure of most economic reforms on the government’s recruitment policies which emphasised recruitment driven by nepotism.

Quoting the Uganda Confidential, he said, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) had become a dumping ground for relatives of government officials.

Uganda Confidential was an anti-corruption weekly magazine that was owned by Teddy Ssezi Cheeye. At the time, the magazine which used to praise itself as “the paper that split the atom” was credited for making some of the biggest corruption exposés of the NRM era.

Cheeye who wound up the publication before he was named director of Economic Monitoring at the Internal Security Organisation (ISO), died in March 2018, a year after his release from prison where he served 10 years for corruption.

Prof Byarugaba claimed that President Museveni, Finance minister Mayanja Nkangi and Mr Museveni’s Aide De Camp (ADC), Captain Sam Kavuma Magaga, were among those who had planted their relatives in the civil service.

Nkangi who held several Cabinet portfolios, retired from government in 2001. He was subsequently named chairperson of the Uganda Land Commission (ULC) before retiring into private legal practice in 2007. He passed on early in March 2017.

Sam Kavuma Magaga has in the meantime remained in the UPDF. He has since risen up to the rank of Lieutenant General. He was in March named Commander of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), succeeding Lt Gen Sam Okiding who was appointed Deputy Chief of Defence Forces of the UPDF.

Corruption figures
The newspaper reported that Prof Byarugaba had revealed that Shs20 billion out of the Shs137 billion collected in the fiscal year 1991/1992, had been stolen. 

Giving a breakdown, he is said to have claimed that Shs10 billion was stolen by government officials; Shs4.1 billion was swindled in the Ministry of Defence; Shs5.5 billion disappeared between the Treasury and Central Bank while Shs540 million had reported vanished in State House.

Ministry of Labour officials, he said, had helped themselves to Shs431 million; those in Health Shs210 million, while those in Internal Affairs could not account for Shs190 million.

Prof Byarugaba who founded the Department of Political Science and taught Political Science at Makerere University passed on in May 2018 after suffering a stroke.

Nsibambi attacked
During the same seminar, Prof Nsibambi, who was the director of Makerere Institute of Social Research and director of the NRM’s Project on Democratisation, condemned the President’s use of closed NRC sessions to make key decisions on important issues like the divestiture programme. 

He argued that the use of closed sessions enabled Mr Museveni to bulldoze NRC members while watchdogs are away, but contradicted himself saying closed sessions were okay when it came to the restoration of traditional rulers.

“In this circumstance, a closed session was necessary for national unity,” he said, but in so doing opened himself up to an attack from Mr Aaron Mukwaya, a lecturer in the Department of Political Science who referred to him as a “Palace Professor” who was bent on “flattering the NRM”. 

Prof Akiiki Mujaju, who was also a lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at Makerere University, also condemned closed sessions as outrageous and accused Nsibambi of inconsistency.

Prof Nsibambi, who was to later serve as Prime Minister in the NRM, passed on in the middle of September 2020.

North-South
The newspaper also reported that Prof Mujaju talked at length about the North-South divisions in Ugandan politics and accused the NRM of having aggravated it by creating a Bantu-dominated army.

“NRA is a Bantu fighting group and has established a Bantu-dominated government,” Prof Mujaju was quoted to have said.

Prof Mujaju died in July 1999 in Mubende after a motor crash that occurred shortly after Mubende Town. He was travelling back home in Fort Portal.

NRM under microscope: 

Prof Foster Byarugaba of the Department of Political Science, criticised the NRM, saying it was high time it stopped singing about its “correct line” if it was true that it was deliberately protecting thieves within its ranks.

Prof Byarugaba who had earlier on submitted a paper titled ‘Civil Service and Parastatal Reform in Uganda’ blamed the failure of most economic reforms on the government’s recruitment policies which emphasised recruitment driven by nepotism.