The wins in Museveni’s 5-point executive order

The Executive Order headlined as Number 3 of 2023, imposed a ban on charcoal burning and business in northern and northeastern Uganda, settlement of Balaalo in northern Uganda and stopped Turkana from Kenya entering into Uganda armed.
Mr Tom Obong, the executive director of the National Forest Authority (NFA), the government agency responsible for forest matters, yesterday said the orders were timely because the depletion of forest cover has been happening with impunity through commercial charcoal enterprises.

“We welcome it and we are looking forward to implementing it together with other stakeholders in the value chain …They were indiscriminately cutting all the trees,” Mr Obong said, noting that the action undergirds the theme of this year’s World Environment Day celebrations focused on restoring biodiversity.
Mr Obong said destruction of forest cover had greatly contributed to climate change that has resulted into unreliable rainfall patterns and floods that are killing people and destroying livelihood and property.

“The floods are even destroying roads,” he said, citing recent mud and landslides in western Uganda and crumbling of a bridge on River Katonga on Masaka highway.
In comments on the ban on Turkana of Kenya from entering Uganda with guns, Moroto Municipality MP Francis Adome Lorika said the move would help restore peace and security in Karamoja.

“They [Turkana] used to cause a lot of instabilities in the region.  When the guns don’t come in, there will be peace and security,” he said.
The reason? Disarmed Karimojong felt vulnerable to raids and often sought to re-arm themselves whenever the Turkana crossed into Uganda armed, the lawmaker said, pointing this as basis for renewed cyclical gun violence in the sub-region.
The State Minister for Northern Uganda, Ms Grace Freedom Kwiyucwiny, said the ban on the Balaalo settling in northern and northeastern Uganda would restore social stability because local cultivators have repeatedly conflicted with the herdsmen over stray livestock destroying gardens, leading to household food insecurity.

“Peace is the biggest benefit we are going to get. Balaalos who are armed were causing insecurity. Some of them tend to move with guns and they scare people. People in northern Uganda didn’t feel good [about their presence],” the minister said, adding, “They (natives) consider them as people who came to cause conflict. They don’t want to report to Local Councils (LCs), interact with the locals and in this era of insecurity, it is dangerous.”
By press time, we were unable to speak to the Balaalo who will be affected by the Executive Order, but President Museveni noted in the directive that their nomadism was a headache because they bought or purported to buy land which in northern Uganda is communally-owned, stirring conflict, and often never paddocked their livestock. 
 
Mr Joseph Koluo, the MP for Toroma County in Karamoja, said “it is the right time for them (Balaalo) to own their specific land and settle so that they carry on livestock keeping instead of moving from one place to another as this may also lead to easy spread diseases”.