Gone are the days when Uganda prided itself on exporting coffee, cotton, and tobacco. Those were the glory days when value addition meant roasting beans or spinning cotton. Today, the nation’s most lucrative commodity has evolved and the most and the hottest commodities are now Brain, Integrity, and Conscience.
But wait, before you rush to invest, you must understand, this is not a free market. This is Uganda’s very own version of a monopoly. It isn’t your ordinary free market. No competition. No innovation. Just one buyer. The market is saturated with supply; brains, integrity and conscious are in abundance. But Demand is low, tragically low. The buyer wants just enough to buy silence, kill dissent, and pass that next dark policy under the cover of darkness. He doesn’t care about quality or intellectual depth. Whether you’re a village-taught Senior Six graduate or a professor from a European university with letters behind your name that read like a Wi-Fi password, you are all purchased at a flat rate of UGX. 100 million.
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This latest market trend was showcased beautifully when Horrible Members were each handed UGX. 100 million, not to boost agriculture, not to invest in infrastructure but to say “thank you” for passing a controversial bill that smells more like burnt ethics. But that wasn’t all. The payment also came with an unspoken clause: support the next big trade, empowering military courts to try civilians, because apparently, the Constitution is just a polite suggestion now. And the target? None other than Dr. Kizza Besigye. Because our country, when a man won’t bow, we don’t debate him, we buy everyone else to silence him.
This trade operates like a black market in a shady downtown alley. The ‘sellers of conscience’ don’t make the transaction in broad daylight. No, they sneak around in the dead of night, slinking through the corridors of the August House like shameful ghosts. Because, according to market policy, Brains must not be sold when sober. Night-time comes with the perfect conditions: alcohol haze, cigarette fog, and… other extracurricular activities. No wander some recently demanded billions to teach themselves how to use condoms. These are the guardians of our nation’s morals.
Let’s pause and ask: How can the integrity of an “Honourable” Member, whose convoy of fuel-guzzling V8s and blaring lead cars would make a dictator blush, be reduced to the equivalent of money meant for iron sheets, goats for Karamoja’s underprivileged or UGX. 100 Million? Is this what honour looks like now. A polished face, a flashing siren, and a stomach full of taxpayer-fed goat meat?
And what exactly are these goods being sold for? Well, a coffee bill here, a military court bill there, all to satisfy the buyer’s political cravings. Right now, he’s targeting one of the last remaining unsold brains in Uganda, a man who’s refused to bend, bow, or break; Kizza Besigye. The buyer has a plan, if you can’t beat him, buy everyone else to destroy him. That’s the model.
Meanwhile, other countries are drafting 100-year development plans, ours is busy funding brain-shopping sprees and workshops to teach sellers how to use condoms. While others are investing in artificial intelligence, we are investing in artificial integrity. While the world moves forward, we are reverse-engineering democracy into a theatrical performance complete with actors, stage managers, and paid audiences.
Now, economists warn that this market is unsustainable. There’s no international demand perhaps because it’s hard to market a product that collapses at the mere sight of accountability. Trump’s tariffs couldn’t hurt this market more than the truth already does. But even locally, the buyer only seems to show interest when there’s a bill to pass, an opponent to crush, or a political storm to weather. What happens when Besigye dies? Who will justify the purchases then? We must plan ahead.
But hope is not dead. There is one group left that can intervene. The Young Generation, Uganda’s last standing economists. We must impose electoral tariffs on these sellers. Tariffs so high that by 2026, this trade crashes. Impose tariffs on these politicians. In 2026, at the ballot box, let every vote be a tax on the corrupt, a levy on shame, and a fine for betrayal. Refuse to buy their stories. Refuse to renew their contracts. Refuse to be bribed with sugar, rice, and t-shirts. Let these sellers pack their overfed bellies and exit the chamber of shame. Let their expensive suits be reduced to costumes for storytelling in funerals. Let the sirens go silent.
By 2026, let them find the market dry. Let their wares rot on the shelves. Let the buyer wander with bags of money and no one left to sell. To every seller who read this and felt a sting, it means my message reached the right address. If your cheeks are burning, it’s not the sun. it is the fire of the truth.
We will not be sold forever!
