The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
The long list of commissions includes the 1990 inquiry into the shooting of two Makerere University Students; Patrick Okema and Patrick Onyango who were shot dead on December 10, 1990 during a sit-down strike over the abolition of stationery and travel allowances. The report of this commission of inquiry has never been made public.
The following year in 1991, there was another commission on the abduction of 43 school girls from Sacred Heart School in Gulu. What do Ugandans remember about this?
In 1999, comes Justice Julia Sebutinde’s probe into the alleged corruption in the Uganda Police Force. The sturdiness of the commission’s chairperson brought pomp to it and the public felt a sense of annihilating corruption from our Police Force.
The Sebutinde commission, which ran from November 1999 to March 2000, handed over its voluminous report to the then Internal Affairs minister Prof. Edward Rugumayo on May 19, 2000. This was released more than one year after it was received from the Commission. Three former senior police officers in the Criminal Investigations Department were interdicted and the report recommended that the Scotland Yard be brought in to investigate those who were found culpable. However, cabinet’s delay to implement the report created an impression to the commission’s witnesses and the public that the government was protecting the corrupt and frustrating the efforts of Ugandans in the fight against corruption.
Just as Sebutinde was concluding her judicial inquiry and the world was preparing to adapt to the reality of the Y2K compliance discussion that was threatening to end life on earth, in that same month of March 2000, Joseph Kibwetere and his cronies of the religious cult of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Kanungu, massacred hundreds of unsuspecting followers in an inferno that caught the attention of the world. Justice Augustus Kania was appointed to head a judicial commission of inquiry into this record-breaking massacre in the name of God.
This probe that came three months to the March 12, 2001 general elections impelled a political debate that became a talking point in the campaigns. It was believed that the Museveni campaign machinery was targeting his main challenger and former NRA colleague Kizza Besigye who hails from Rukungiri near Kanungu. We later heard that government failed to get money for this probe. The rest is in our annals!
High Court Judge Julia Sebutinde bounces back in November 2000 to probe into the controversial purchase of two junk combat helicopters from Belarus by the defence ministry in 1996. These two attack helicopters cost the government of Uganda a whopping shs.9.5b only to be grounded at the Entebbe airbase. The probe timing was also blurred in a political season where Presidential aspirant Kizza Besigye had accused President Museveni of personally awarding the helicopter deal to a local company from which his brother, Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh, allegedly took a bribe of $800,000. This is just one of the many commissions in our history.
In April 2002, Julia Sebutinde who was credited with causing a rout over corruption in the Uganda Police Force and the Defence Ministry in her two previous probes was appointed to lead another investigation in an effort to wipe out the high levels of corruption at the tax authority whose revenue collections had grossly fallen below average.
A three-month judicial probe in its investigations found that four companies, Mukwano, Kakira, Grand Imperial and Genesis, owed the authority more than shs.30bn in unpaid taxes. There were also rumor talks of a list of the 100 most corrupt people in the authority that was never given to the commission. Was this also intended to solve a problem or diffuse public rage?
Eighteen years later, Mr. Museveni in his budget speech to Members of Parliament and the public confessed that there has been a lot of corruption in URA and he had thoroughly cleaned it.
We saw the axe swinging on several commissioners’ heads during this COVID-19 lock down and numerous inexplicable resignations. We hope that this tax house was truly cleaned!
Enter 2006. Another probe into the misuse of money from the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Uganda headed by Justice James Ogoola, unearthed its own share of the corruption filth in Uganda. This was occasioned by the suspension in August 2005 of five grants worth US$367 million; raising numerous questions about the integrity of the fund managers.
The most notable event of this probe is the on-camera exchange between Justice Ogoola and Jim Muhwezi, when the latter called on the former minister to look into the then WBSTV cameras and publicly take responsibility and apologize. Muhwezi’s response became another media debate tag line.
We proudly saw some manifestations of a spirited combat against corruption when the key suspects, State Ministers Mike Mukula and Dr. Alex Kamugisha (primary health) were charged at Buganda Road and remanded to Luzira Prison. There were crowds at the court premises demanding that Muhwezi who had at the time fled the country be produced and charged as well. We’ve since moved on.
In 2007, the government again constituted another probe to investigate the misuse of a shs.70b World Bank loan given to UWA meant for the Protected Areas Management Sustainable Use (PAMSU).
The Justice GW Kanyeihamba led commission was tasked to probe into the mismanagement of these funds. The tough-talking judge put up an uncompromising posture and threatened errant witnesses with indictment. Not much of this commission may be remembered by Ugandans. But in a turn of events, the hunting judge became the hunted when his commission was accused of failing to account for over shs.280m that was given to it. The rest is history. [ Continued on page 3 ]
