Start corruption fight from home, Tayebwa tells Christians

The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr Thomas Tayebwa, has asked Christians to demand accountability starting in their homes if they are to fight corruption.

Mr Tayebwa, who was speaking at the Memorial Mass of the late Archbishop Paul Kamuza Bakyenga at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cathedral Nyamitanga in Mbarara last Friday, said the people stealing government money are born and bred from individual families where corruption starts.
“Corruption is not only in the government but also in your villages and families. They send you to go buy commodities at home but you squeeze out some money, they give you milk to go sell but you add in liters of water, which is bad. That is how corruption starts,” he said. 
“Leaders who are stealing government money were not mended anywhere, they come from you, they are your people, they are your sons and daughters, they learn all the behaviors from you,” he added.
Mr Tayebwa encouraged Christians to instill good morals in their children to fight corruption at the grassroots.
“You have a burial at the village and someone commits himself to bring a 150kg cow but instead brings one of 70kgs. That is corruption. You find that even in a church, some people eat church money and you find a priest struggling with that because they do not usually put church issues in the public,” he said.
 “Thank you for organising such a ceremony to remember the late, he was my friend, he used to visit me when I was still renting in Nalya, and he would come to pray for us. He baptized my son and he supported most of the Christians. It is good for Christians to serve God and support their churches,” he added.
The Sheema District Woman MP, Ms Rosemary Nyakikongoro, said if corruption is fought at the family level, leaders would be afraid to steal.
 “It is the public that is supposed to fight corruption. It is not going to be an individual to fight corruption, it should not all be about President Museveni in the corruption fight but rather should be a corrective responsibility in this fight,” she said.
Mbarara Archdiocese Rev Fr Severinus Ndugwa said the memorial Mass of the late Archbishop Paul K Bakyenga was not to grieve but to show the Lord that he gave them such a great leader.
“We are here not to grieve but to thank God, we have come here to show the Lord that he had given us a great man. We remember him today July 18, we thank him for showing love, unity, and strength in faith. God gave us a leader in the Archbishop. He didn’t die, he only slept, and he will wake up on the judgment day,” Fr Ndugwa said.
He added that Christians must make sure they put into account whatever they learned from the late to keep his legacy and candle burning. 
“He would laugh with happy souls, cry with grieving souls. To preserve his legacy and keep his candle burning, we should match his deeds. What matters is how one lives, not how they die,” he said.