Bazel Odeke is a political commentator (PHOTO/Courtesy)
Following World Bank’s decision to halt loans to Uganda, a lot of unanswered questions and speculations have since then rocked the public domain with many starting to curse life ahead due to underlying measures that loom to be activated.
It’s quite overt that, we have been tasked to assess and evaluate ourselves, what and how we have become for the last incredible years of engagement, isn’t that pretty good somehow? Teach a man how to fish and feed him for life. Are we ready to feed ourselves?
Must we weep while assessing and evaluating ourselves? It’s quite obvious, the reason why we are weeping is because we chose to satisfy the ego than the national interest, here we are, national interests glancing and facing us vividly and the bitter truth pops in, we should have done this and that for the time we had this and that, quite regretful, right?
But then, must we weep long for standing on what we believe and contend as a country? Must we allow our culture to degenerate? Must we lead what they desire? The bold and solid answer is NO, we are Africans, we have the heritage to preserve, we have the culture to be proud of and therefore, we must decide on what’s good for us and vice versa.
With western clouds gathering, resenting, and piercing, it’s high time we come to face reality, they love us when we conform to what they believe and disagree with us when we declare what we believe. It ceases and violates in any way the principle of symbiotic relationship if truly, they counted and considered us as us and not them in us.
It will be very destitute if we fail to decolonize ourselves from the bondage of superstition and superiority and begin to treat our problems as our own and address them as the fathers and mothers of the next generation. Our grandparents extensively laid everything for us to mimic, and here we are.
The unfortunate and heedless reality is, we largely spent(pocket-wise) more than we invested. Even at a point when we could do the latter, our pockets became accommodative at the expense of national interest. Perhaps, we wouldn’t feel the heat in any way, we could walk out of the kitchen deliberately without causing commotion. But then, that’s the structural problem we manufactured. Hopefully, we won’t continue to lead in the slogan of “learnt nothing and forgot nothing”. We must accept and set our own fire.
What do we have to do then? To rethink Uganda. How? By starting to address our own problems. What are the problems? You know them, I guess!
Firstly, corruption. Over the past years, our policies and programs have been very relevant to a student of social policy analysis(theory) than have they been in addressing the local realities and the intentions for which they were formulated. We enter through the front door with empty pockets and use the behind door to exit with illicit opulence. Besides, we spend hours debating what’s already preconditioned to benefit a few. It’s so fortunate/unfortunate that, we now have to decide whether to keep siphoning the little or change the lifestyle.
Secondly, the nature of the administrative structure has to be amended. Let’s look at the number of Government Agencies, Members of Parliament, and Ministries, which ideally could be amalgamated to fit in the current demand. We may choose to continue trekking on an already established system(because it’s good), but the pertinent question is, what will be the welfare of the already impoverished nationals?
Ostensibly, the lifestyle we have adopted and personalized over the years – luxuriance, needs to be handled perhaps trimmed, if really we are patriotic enough. We must resent spending on cheap popularity seeking-behavior, in the name of the next election, appending signatures that suck and destroy the interests of the country and tribal backroom, which is evident everywhere!
Besides, clear policy formulation, prioritization, implantation, evaluation, and alignment have to be done with utmost respect and good faith, depicting local realities. If truly, we could treat corruption and mismanagement of government programs as a criminal sin, shall we have a clear focus on our vision and what we need as a country?
We have the capacity and capability to animate on our own, but the issue is to prepare ourselves and align it to the reality of what we believe as a country, let’s be genuine in all government entities and patriotic enough. We need them, that’s for a fact, just as they need us for reasons anyone can tell, but if they don’t like what we are then it’s obvious they don’t need us. We have now to sort ourselves.
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