Joseph Kabuleta, the party president of the National Economic Empowerment Dialogue (NEED), during a weekly presser at the party offices in Mengo on November 4, 2024, claimed in his speech about the rationalization of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) with the Ministry of Agriculture that it is a deliberate move by President Museveni to prevent rural wealth accumulation and suppress financial gains.
Kabuleta, as an ‘economic guru’ like he would like us to believe, has since 2018 criticized or gone against all government policies and projects set by NRM.
In 2018, Kabuleta developed an interest in politics and later campaigned for the presidency in 2021 and lost to the incumbent. However, let us take a peek into Kabuleta’s economic thoughts of faith against those of empirical data and quantitative analysis by different organizations and agencies and see if he indeed understands the dynamics of Uganda’s needs and priorities.
Cases in Point
In 2016, the government of Uganda, together with the World Health Organization, rolled out a massive immunization service drive to reach over 80% of the children with recommended doses of lifesaving childhood vaccinations.
Their sole purpose was to eliminate polio, measles, and the human papilloma virus and strengthen tetanus toxoid vaccinations in the country, a move Kabuleta criticized and demonized during his campaign trail as un-yielding and dangerous to the population.
Following the massive countrywide immunization, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the child immunization coverage rates of some of the diseases stood at 91% in 2021 compared to 2015 with 56%.
“In 2011, 90 children out of 1000 live births would die before their fifth birthday; today the figure has dropped to 52, and this is attributed to vaccination. In the same period, the number of children dying before their first birthday dropped from 54 per 1000 live births to 36 per 1000 live births,” WHO recorded.
Kabuleta, while on his campaign trail for the presidential bid in 2021, either by faith or omission, ignored the facts and advised parents against having their children vaccinated with claims that the vaccines are meant to turn their children sterile and decrease in number.
Additionally, in the wake of COVID-19, Kabuleta, the faith-based economic guru, did not sit still; he took a swing at the lockdown policy enforced by President Museveni to keep Ugandans safe from the world epidemic that had killed millions around the world. Driven by his emotions rather than deal with data and facts on the ground, Kabuleta accused President Museveni of lying to Ugandans, saying that there was no COVID-19 in the country. He claimed that it was the government glorifying COVID-19 to benefit the rich and that a lockdown was not necessary.
“Covid-19 is an international sickness, which means we can’t rely on local doctors like Dr. Atwine for expert advice of a local down. Once the 42-day lockdown is over, churches should be opened for worship because it is an essential part of our lives,” Kabuleta said.
Kabuleta once again reasoned from a faith-based angle and ignored all the facts about COVID that were revenging the world and killing millions.
According to worldometer and Ministry of Health Uganda empirical data statistics, 172,149 Ugandans suffered from COVID-19, resulting in 3,632 deaths by September 22, 2023.
So, was this ignorance on Kabuleta’s part or lack of knowledge to analyze the facts as they were in the public domain because shortly after COVID-19 in 2022, Uganda was yet hit with an epidemic of Ebola.
Kabuleta was once again quick to attack the government and President Museveni and claimed that the government was going to call for a lockdown and forcefully vaccinate the population for Ebola, yet there was no Ebola in Uganda, and that it was the government’s trick to get money from funders.
“The purpose of the lockdown is to force people to get vaccinated; these vaccines are coming with money, but God knows what will happen to you three months down the road,” Kabuleta stated.
However, according to BBC News, Kabuleta was among the few Ugandans who claimed there was no Ebola and the vaccines were not safe, quoting his X post, and yet he provided no evidence to this effect.
Read Also: Museveni’s Gospel of Value Addition is Killing Agricultural Sector—Kabuleta
Once again, factual figures and data presented by the Ministry of Health Uganda recorded 141 Ebola cases and 55 deaths.
Can Uganda as a nation, therefore, trust that Kabuleta is speaking the truth and with undisputed data and figures when he claims Museveni is lying to Ugandans about UCDA?
Putting in mind the above scenarios with undisputed data from reliable sources and the voices of the coffee farmers who they claim to be fighting for, after meeting Katikiro Charles Peter Mayiga, they shared that UCDA has not been of help to them as coffee farmers and that they should be left to embrace the president’s decision of rationalization.
