Author: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE
A regular reader of this page might vaguely remember the Sunday I got worried about the balance of egos between Uganda and Nigeria in the matter of counting people.
You see, a few years back, a naughty Gen Kahinda Otafiire had caused a minor diplomatic incident by humorously suggesting that the Nigerians could not count themselves. Count (accurately).
The Nigerians, who generally do not get amused by people from small countries who slight them, refused to laugh. Being a patriot, when Uganda’s census exercise smelt doomed from day-one, I feared that the Nigerians might be warming up for pay-back time.
When it is time for cheering, the Nigerians are very good. If it is jeering, they are even better. Standing between our glory and our shame as a nation was the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos), the statistics outfit that got more than Shs300 billion – yes, billion – for counting us.
As a true patriot, I wanted this thing to work so that the Nigerians might not call us bigger idiots than them. Ubos would vindicate Gen Otafiire.
However, as a fairly honest man, I privately understood that I had to grow long ears like a proper idiot to expect the 2024 census to be a success.
Surprisingly, since the actual mess that was named Census 2024 came into full view, all sorts of citizens have been up in arms against Ubos. You would think Ubos was a bunch of gangsters that had killed whole tribes.
Or whole age groups. Or whole religious groups. Question: Why did these citizens expect champagne from a tonto jerry-can? Uganda is a vampire state. Vampire states do not get such exercises right. Do you understand? I repeat: Do you understand?
I am not being rude. However, forgive most citizens as lost sheep, and consider only the religious groups. If I, a creature masquerading only as God’s dog, a mere dog, can understand this simple vampire state rule, why can’t people masquerading as God’s prophets get it?
In the past week, I have heard Catholics, Anglicans and Muslims crying that their members were incompetently or maliciously under-counted, resulting in falling percentages of the total population.
Yet even the Pentecostals are crying foul. Although they are the only group whose percentage rose, they are saying the rise should be much bigger; I suppose judging by the noise their pastors make on urban streets during the day, and outside our bedrooms at night.
But now, tell us, holy people; in such a corrupt and variously wretched society, why would you want a bigger share of this deplorable population, unless your holiness is full of holes?
Let me put it this way: If we went into a big room sheltering a thousand criminals, and the bishops, muftis and prophets started jostling and fighting for recognition that they were the moral guardians of most of these criminals, I would open my mouth. Totally amazed.
In rotten societies, rotten religion tends to grow. And hypocrisy flies high.
The greatest Nigerian pastor/prophet of the last 20 years or so was probably TB Joshua, and he also turned out to be one of Nigeria’s greatest criminals.
In Uganda, many dirty high politicians and politically connected crooks use masks labelled ‘saved’.
A sizable gullible crowd buys into the hypocrisy. But if you have embraced the NRM-driven status quo, its corruption and its disorder, apparently primarily because it has permitted chaotic religion to spread and do its spiritual shows any-which-way its good and fake prophets want, how did you dream of a census whose numbers were not fake?
