Inside fights over Museveni Shs25b for teachers Saccos

For the past year, Ms Mbabazi and others, including Mr John Peter Mujuni, the head of the Microfinance Support Centre, have been battling charges of embezzlement and conspiracy to defraud before the Anti-Corruption Court, whose prosecution failed to get off the ground until Grade One Magistrate Moses Nabende dismissed the case on August 26. 

Often times, when the debate about teachers’ welfare comes up, reference is made to the Shs25b that the President provided for the teachers’ Sacco, and the accusing fingers have been pointed in different directions.

To understand what happened to the money, we have revisited the issue from the start, starting with April 2010 when Ms Asiimwe, then a teacher based in Jinja, registered the Uganda Teachers’ Cooperatives, Savings and Credit Union under registration number 9192/RCS.

Ms Asiimwe, looking to breathe life into the Sacco, invited President Museveni to launch it at Jinja Main Street Primary School on July 23, 2011. President Museveni said at the function that he liked the idea of availing teacher’s low-cost credit so they would set up projects to augment their low salaries. He pledged Shs25b for that teachers’ Sacco, which the government later decided to disburse in instalments of Shs5b per year over a five-year period and would be lent out to teachers at an interest rate of 11 per cent per annum.

Whereas Ms Asiimwe insists that the money “was specifically promised to Uganda Teachers’ Cooperatives, Savings and Credit Union”, Mr James Tweheyo, who at the time was the general secretary of the Uganda National Teachers Union (Unatu), says President Museveni made the same pledge to them at about the same time.

Mr Tweheyo says during one of the many of meetings they had with the President as representatives of teachers pushing for a pay rise, the President said the government was unable to increase the salaries of teachers to the level they wanted at the time, but that he would instead avail Shs25b for a fund to be created out of which teachers would borrow at an affordable interest rate. 

Unatu caught wrong-footed

Going by the claims by the two parties, it is apparent that Mr Museveni made the promise to the different sets of representatives of teachers, with the aim being able to avail low-cost credit to teachers. A problem would, however, eventually arise over who of the parties would be the vehicle for disbursing the money to the teachers and manage the fund.

Whereas each of the parties that say they are the true representatives of the teachers in this case say they were meant to be the rightful recipients of the President’s pledged money, Unatu seemed unprepared for it when it arrived. Whereas the group that Ms Asiimwe leads had registered a cooperative society that had existed for at least four years when the first instalment of the money was disbursed, Unatu did not have a Sacco and, therefore, lacked a vehicle for managing the money.

The plan was for the government to release Shs5b to the teachers over a five-year period, and when the first batch of Shs5b was released to the Ministry of Education, the then minister, now Vice President Jessica Alupo, had an immediate problem to solve. Who would the ministry hand the money to? This question was pertinent since Unatu was a labour union focused on fighting for the rights of teachers and not a Sacco with structures and expertise to manage funds of the sort that was involved in this case.

The Ministry of Education decided to source for a competent fund manager to manage the teachers fund at a fee, with the resultant process returning the Microfinance Support Centre as the best rated bidder. Unatu, as Mr Tweheyo recalls, “Protested vehemently” against selecting the Microfinance Support Centre to manage the teachers’ fund.

Mr Tweheyo says they opposed Ms Alupo’s suggestion that the teachers could not manage their own money, saying that among them were head teachers who managed schools with an annual turnover much bigger than the Shs5b that the government was to avail per year for five years.

But Mr Tweheyo seemed to disregard the differences between running a school on the one hand and a loans disbursing entity on the other.

Even amidst the protests from Unatu leaders, the Ministry of Education, under Ms Alupo, proceeded and released the money, Shs10b, to the Microfinance Support Centre to manage on behalf of teachers.

The Microfinance Support Centre moved to establish relationships with different entities across the country, through which loans would be availed to teachers, but before long, the voices of Unatu leaders tipped the scales.

President Museveni, in response to the protests from Unatu, directed that the money be handed over to the teachers to manage by themselves.

The Microfinance Support Centre, in view of the directive, transferred the Shs10b to Ms Asiimwe’s Uganda Teachers’ Cooperatives, Savings and Credit Union, with which it had already established a working relationship.

This led to more protests by the leaders of Unatu, who argued that they were the elected leaders of teachers and, therefore, the only competent authority to manage teachers’ affairs and money.

In handing over the money to Ms Asiimwe’s cooperative, the Microfinance Support Centre reasoned that it was the only registered teachers’ cooperative that had a semblance of structures and they could not hand over the money to Unatu, which they said was not a cooperative union or union of Saccos. The Microfinance Suport Center advised Ms Asiimwe’s Sacco to profile members and set up and take on teacher Saccos that had initially been served under the Microfinance Support Centre.

The Unatu leaders straightaway went to work and within a few weeks, they had come up with a solution.

On December 2, 2015, according to official records we have seen, the Unatu members registered a Sacco of their own, which bore the same name as Ms Asiimwe’s – Uganda Teachers Cooperative Savings and Credit Union Limited. On learning of the development, Ms Asiimwe said, she protested to the Registrar of Cooperative Societies then, Mr Joseph William Kitandwe, against Unatu registering a Sacco with the same name as hers.

Before the registrar would respond to her query, things moved very fast. With their newly received registration certificate in hand, it took only two days for the leaders of Unatu, using their new Sacco, to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Education to receive the rest of the teachers’ money and manage it on behalf of the teachers.

The day the MoU was signed – December 4, 2015 – is the same day the new Sacco received the first instalment of what would eventually amount to about Shs17b.

After the new Sacco of the Unatu leaders receiving the first instalment of the money on December 4, 2015, the Registrar of Cooperatives, Mr Kitandwe, wrote to the new entity on December 8, 2015, notifying them that it had come to his attention that there was another cooperative with a similar name – Uganda Teachers’ Cooperative Savings and Credit Union. Ms Asiimwe had registered her cooperative under that name in April 2010, under registration number 9192/RCS. When the Unatu leaders registered theirs under the same name in December 2015, they got registration number 10739/RCS.

The registrar advised the new Sacco to change their name “to avoid confusion in the public”. The Unatu leaders proceeded to effect a change of name, moving from Uganda Teachers’ Cooperative Savings and Credit Union Limited, to Uganda Teachers Savings and Credit Cooperative Union Limited.

Ms Asiimwe still remained unsatisfied and complained to the registrar, saying even the changed name remained similar to the name of her entity, with just a few words swapped.

Unatu was, therefore, prompted into a third change of name within three weeks, according to the records, moving from Uganda Teachers Savings and Credit Cooperative Union Limited to Walimu Cooperative Savings and Credit Union Limited. This final change of name, the records show, happened on December 24, 2015, just three weeks after the first name was registered on December 2, 2015.

But there is more, pointing to fiddling with dates by the Unatu members. The registration certificate for the Uganda Teachers Savings and Credit Cooperative Union Limited, which name was adopted after the Unatu Sacco leaders had been advised by the registrar to change their name from Uganda Teachers’ Cooperative Savings and Credit Union Limited, bears the date of January 24, 2014. This would be almost a year before the Sacco, whose name was being changed had been registered, which points to a possibility of backdating.

Furthermore, whereas the registration certificate of Walimu Cooperative Savings and Credit Union Limited bears the date of December 24, 2015, the resolution of Uganda Teachers’ Saccos Union, which was adopted at a ‘special general meeting’, shows that the decision to change the name to Walimu Cooperative Savings and Credit Union Limited, was made on January 21, 2017. This means the teachers’ representatives made a resolution to change the name of their sacco over a year after the name was actually changed.

What was the motive of registering a Sacco with the same name as Ms Asiimwe’s, with whom the leaders of Unatu had been squabbling over the management of the teachers’ fund? What explains the discrepancies in dates on the registration certificates and other documents of the Sacco that the Unatu leaders eventually registered? 

We put these questions to Mr Tweheyo on Thursday and this was his answer: “Those don’t remove the fact that the President promised Unatu money. Whether the money went to the right beneficiary should be the matter.”

Mr Tweheyo, who has since moved out of Unatu and has since been assigned by President Museveni to work within the ruling NRM party, declined to discuss the status of the funds that were handed to Walimu Cooperative Savings and Credit Union Limited, referring us to his former colleagues, in particular Mr Filbert Baguma, who replaced him as general secretary of Unatu. Mr Baguma told this newspaper he was abroad and several attempts to speak to him on the matter were futile.

On the other hand, about Shs7b of the money that was handed to Ms Asiimwe is frozen in a bank account due to the cases that have been ongoing.

Ms Asiimwe and top executives of the Microfinance Support Centre, as mentioned above, have been on trial on allegations of stealing the teachers’ money in question.

She accuses members of Unatu, past and present, of being behind the charges in a bid to get their hands on the money her Sacco manages and “cover up the fraud they carried out in the registration processes.”

In response to this accusation, Mr Tweheyo, who hinted that it was possible that new charges could be brought against Ms Asiimwe, said: “The good thing is that she is presented before a court of law so that a fair decision is made”. 

Ms Asiimwe’s comment

Ms Joan Asiimwe Mwebembezi, the chairperson of the Uganda Teachers’ Cooperatives, Savings and Credit Union, wrote in a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions on March 17, 2021: “It should be noted that UNATU/Walimu SACCOS has never accounted for the money they got fraudulently from the Ministry of Education and Sports. It was when we raised questions in the similarity of the name that they changed to Walimu SACCOS. They used that name because they were aware that the President had given the directive for this money to be given to Uganda Teachers Cooperative, Savings and Credit Union so they used Uganda Teachers Savings, Cooperative, and Credit Union.” 

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The contention

Whereas Ms Joan Asiimwe Mwebembezi, the chairperson of the Uganda Teachers’ Cooperatives, Savings and Credit Union insists that the money “was specifically promised to Uganda Teachers’ Cooperatives, Savings and Credit Union”, Mr James Tweheyo, who at the time was the general secretary of the Uganda National Teachers Union (Unatu), says President Museveni made the same pledge to them at about the same time.