Prime
Govt officials allocated billions for donations
President Museveni gives a sack full of money to Basoga youth in 2013. The question of donation of cash to citizens, groups and institutions, mostly by high ranking government officials through envelope handouts at public functions or substantial inter-bank transfers, has repeatedly stirred national discussion as to the governance ethics and accountability. Photo | File
What you need to know:
- Without policy guidelines, civil society leaders argue that Shs163 billion allocated to 50 ministries, departments and agencies in donation kitty could be abused to reward loyalists, exacerbating poverty and poor budget planning.
About 50 ministries, departments and agencies have up to Shs163 billion in their budgets for discretionary spending, eliciting disapproval from civil society and a defence from government spokespeople.
Mr Xavier Ejoyi, the ActionAid International country director, and Mr Julius Mukunda, the executive director of the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG), separately said the allocations are susceptible to abuse due to lack of a guiding law and broadly reflect poor budget planning.
Our analysis of the budget shows that State House, Parliament, Office of the President and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) have the largest gifting votes in the 2023/2024 financial year.
State House alone has been assigned Shs137.7b, with Shs137b for President Museveni’s community outreach and initiatives while the donation for Vice President Jessica Alupo’s office is Shs719m.
Parliamentary Commission, the top governing body of the Legislature, takes the second biggest share of Shs9.7b, nearly half of which is expended on communication and public relations.
The donation kitty for the Office of the Speaker Anita Among and Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa are Shs2.4b and Shs1.8b, respectively. There is another Shs480m for handout by the Parliamentary Commission leadership.
The offices of Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja, her three deputies, the Government Chief Whip and the Minister for General Duties between themselves share up to Shs5b for donations.
These details yesterday prompted civil society leaders to declare that the huge donation budgets undergird the rising costs of transactional and commercialised politics, with office holders likely deploying public resources to buy loyalty and cover the gap of less-than-satisfactory service delivery that makes constituents needy in the first place.
“The money involved is big and it does not have a guiding law or rule,” said ActionAid International Uganda’s Ejoyi.
He added: “Despite Uganda being among the most transparent countries when it comes to budgeting, the last minute negotiations between the Executive and Parliament ends up affecting priorities, leading to increased poverty and poor health services and yet money is allocated to such donations.”
The question of donation of cash to citizens, groups and institutions, mostly by high ranking government officials through envelope handouts at public functions or substantial inter-bank transfers, has repeatedly stirred national discussion as to the governance ethics and accountability.
Uganda made headlines on the UK public broadcaster, the BBC, in April 2013 after President Museveni ferried Shs250m in a sack to gift Busoga Youth Forum in fulfilment of a 2011 campaign pledge.
The State House budget, and allocations, have since increased, attracting criticism from, among others, Kira Municipality Member of Parliament Ibrahim Ssemujju who accused President Museveni of profligacy.
Neither Senior Presidential Spokesman Sandor Walusimbi nor his Deputy Faruk Kirunda was available yesterday to speak on the billions budgeted for State House in donations.
Left to right: Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja, Chief Justice Alfonse Owinyi-Dollo and Speaker of Parliament Anita Among during the official opening of the Non-Aligned Movement Summit at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala on January 19. Our analysis of the budget shows that State House, Parliament, Office of the President and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) have the largest gifting votes in the 2023/2024 financial year. PHOTO | ABUBAKER LUBOWA.
In a November 2023 rejoinder to MP Ssemujju’s claims, Mr Kirunda counter-argued that President Museveni was one of the “most frugal” heads of state.
“The president has had a culture from back in the day during his struggles as a rebel leader when he had nothing, but would never fail to pursue his mission due to lack of resources,” he said then.
He added: “If he wasn’t a realist, nothing would stop him from amassing personal wealth from public resources. Instead, whatever he is accused of ‘overusing’ is in the service of the people and there is nothing anybody can teach him about cost cutting and financial prudence.”
Mr Museveni has variously spoken out against donations by political leaders, underlining it as the reason for indebtedness of many legislators, some thing he said diverts MPs from concentrating on law making and oversight roles in the chase for money.
The debate about donations by public figures has returned to the centre of public discourse in the country following revelations in the past week by activists’ in a social media exhibition that aides and other senior staff at Parliament regularly withdraw billions of shillings ostensibly for their principals’ corporate social responsibility activities.
Excerpts of documents that the exhibitors, among them journalist-cum-lawyer Agather Atuhaire and academic-cum-cartoonist Jimmy Ssentongo, alias Spire, said were printed off the government Integrated Financial Information Management System (IFMIS), showed millions of shillings of tax payers’ money being passed onto private bank accounts of Parliament staff for onward withdrawal for official work.
Such practices mirror methods that bureaucrats at OPM used between 2010 and 2012 to pilfer more than Shs60b that development partners pooled to rebuild northern Uganda scarred by the Lord’s Resistance Army rebellion.
Parliament officials in background briefings to this newspaper said the OPM officials passed “programme money” through individual staff bank accounts, contrary to directing the spend to pre-qualified firms, which is different from donations that are discretionary.
Neither Speaker Anita Among nor Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa have publicly commented on the allegations of questionable spending and nepotism in recruitment of staff.
Parliament’s Director of Communication and Public Affairs, Mr Chris Obore, who is one of the recipients of hundreds of millions in donation cash on his bank account, last night defended the transfers.
“In Parliament case the figures were heavily distorted to achieve propaganda ends. But the general principle of paying donations through officials is for accountability purposes,” he said by telephone.
He added: “Politicians do not envisiage how requests for help come to them unlike govt programmes which are preplanned and can be implemented through known suppliers.”
Figures unearthed in the Agora Discourse-led exhibition on X, formerly Twitter, are “distorted”, he said, repeating similar submission he made in an X space conversation hosted by the exhibitors last week.
CSBAG’s Julius Mukunda told this newspaper last evening that “in a country where you have challenges in health sector, [where the government] still pay[s] capitation grant of Shs10,000 for a primary school pupil per year, [where there is] poor road network … hav[ing] such a budget for donations shows that our problem is not lack of money, but how to allocate it”.
“We must change our priorities to solve these challenges,” he said.
In an interview, OPM Spokesman, Mr Charles Odongtho, defended the donation kitty as “planned and spent in an organised manner”.
“This budget is formulated based on the needs, earlier planned with all activities that will be undertaken, we discuss it and take it to Parliament for debating where it is passed. So, whichever money that is donated, goes to the activity that was prior planned during the budgeting process,” he said.
This budget, Mr Odongtho noted, was formulated in line with the National Development Plan III and ensures every expenditure made is in line with, and to deliver services, illuminated in the blueprint and President Museveni’s 2021 re-election manifesto.
Other entities with donation budgets include the National Council of Sports, Uganda Police Force, Uganda Prisons Service, National Lotteries and Gaming Board, Uganda Tourism Board, National Population Council, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA).
In yesterday’s interview, ActionAid Internal Uganda Country Director, Mr Xavier Ejoyi, asked the government to develop a policy to guide donations to the public by its officials, which would prescribe eligibility criteria, payout permissible to individual recipients, manner of delivery and accountability mechanism as well as cap budget allocation for donations per ministry, agency and department.
This, he noted, must be accompanied by the ‘deliberate efforts” to fund common public goods such as education and health services.
“And this will help in minimising the need for donations because now we shall have what it needs for one to get the proper services they need in schools, hospitals and as well reduce income inequalities among the masses,” he added.
In earlier comments during the March 5 conversation on X platform, hosted by Agora Discourse to discuss disclosures in the wake of the ongoing #UgandaParliamentExbihition, Mr Obore said:
“Parliament like any other organisation, has corporate social responsibility. An institution like Parliament cannot be seen just to spend money, but to also give back to the community and feel people’s pulse. We have got many requests to the Speaker for money.”
He last week told the Monitor that the budget allocations are based on priority needs, planned activities and emergencies, mirroring views similar to those OPM Spokesman Odongtho expressed.
