Corruption, a vice that has become the new normal in Uganda, is one of the serious problems Uganda is facing as a country. The levels of corruption have reached an extent where everybody is corrupt and those who are not are just waiting for the opportunity.
Fighting corruption in Uganda has become like the famous story of hiring a starving goat to guard monkeys from ravaging your sweet potato gardens.
Time and again, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni promised to fight and crash the vice, but instead, it has increased.
The various duplicated institutions put in place to fight the vice are instead more corrupt than the rest.
The Inspector General of Government, the State House Anti-Corruption Unit, the Criminal Investigation Department of Police, and many more have exhibited failure to fight corruption, and some have publicly said that they are incapacitated.
Who will help the common Ugandans then? Most of these anti-corruption units are infested with fearless corrupt cadres.
Surprisingly, the ombudsman has concentrated on arresting chicken thieves, leaving out serious thieves.
Ideally, all institutions put in place to fight corruption are just pretending to be fighting, but nothing is being done, and we have reached an extent where thieves steal with impunity because they are sure nothing will happen to them.
Voter bribery and commercialization of politics are very normal in the country, to the extent that even a kindergarten child bribes fellow children with sweets to vote for them, and the sweets are bought by the parents of the candidate children.
This means that we are grooming future leaders who know that votes are bought and future voters who will grow knowing there is no free vote. The pastors and religious leaders also ask for bribes in order to offer prayers and blessings in return. How did we get here?
The Parliament that would be a center of excellence in legislation and fighting for the common man has turned into a bottomless pit for taxpayers’ money, and it has become normal.
It is now clear that there are no free jobs at any recruitment center and no free services anywhere in both government and public organizations. The common man is on his own in Uganda, and this is not about to change.
What happened to the NRM that used to be known as a champion in fighting such vices? It is now clear that only the president can help in issuing decrees that can fight this vice; otherwise, all Ugandans are now corrupt, and we cannot help each other.
If a poor Ugandan cannot seek justice at the police or court without paying a bribe, then we are in end times. The NRM has been thriving on showing its willingness to fight such vices, but it seems they gave up.
Ugandans are now at the mercy of waiting for western countries to sanction the corrupt officials since there is no will by most top government officials entrusted with the task to combat the vice.
What is more interesting is that the few corrupt officials arrested are later cleared, even when the evidence is glaring. The countable convicted serve the sentence and come back to communities without their properties attached.
If there is something that will bring the end of NRM, then it is corruption and nothing else. All are pretending to be fighting corruption, but nobody is actually doing it; the institutionalized vice has put the country down.
