President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was sworn in for the sixth term on Wednesday, May 12, at Kololo ceremonial grounds in Kampala. The homes of the main opposition figures, Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, and Kizza Besigye were reportedly under siege by heavily armed security men. Kampala city also remained under heavy security deployment.  Museveni will end the current term in five years when he is 81 years old.

At each swearing in ceremony as President of Uganda, Museveni has always reminded Ugandans how he went to the bush to fight all sorts of bad governance practices by his predecessors, chief among them being corruption and nepotism. 

However, despite his sugar-coated speeches - which he has always delivered in the same monologue tone, his deeds speak otherwise. He preaches water and drinks wine.

From the time it was revealed that Museveni was going to be on the ballot for the elections in 2021, many Ugandans and political analysts, with vivid examples, made it clear that Museveni won't be able to do what he failed to do in the last 35 years.

Interestingly, many of these analysts agree on the belief that if at all any change is to take place in Uganda, it will be one towards a downward trend where the Ugandan system has been heading to over the years. 

In his inauguration speech, Museveni once again went on a tirade against his predecessors, accusing them of running down the economy, then went on to accuse them of having focused on the wrong vices such as identity, religion and sectarianism. He even dared to call some of them illiterate - specifically in reference to Idi Amin. 

Interestingly, Museveni announced that his government has managed to inculcate what he referred to as the four principles of NRM: patriotism, pan africanism as a necessity of the prosperity of the society, socio economic transformation and the development of human resource through education and human health. He finally dared to say that Ugandans had not known democracy until his reign! 

From the above declarations, only those who do not know Museveni can be fooled. For many Ugandans, and his regional neighbours, his speech was a déjà vu - same promises that he promises on his campaign trails that end up remaining on paper.

Corruption

Corruption is increasingly becoming a norm, with Museveni himself and his close family members  linked to some of the biggest corruption scandals in the country. The recent Air Uganda scandal reveals that the President, through his brother Caleb Akandwanaho, alias Salim Saleh, who is the de facto Vice President and Prime Minister combined, has his hand deep in the fracas that threatens the existence of the airline that was revived barely two years ago. The airline is being revived at a huge cost. It was previously liquidated, after it was stripped naked by the same Salim Saleh.

Museveni’s biggest record in corruption is being the only sitting President on earth with a corruption case in a foreign country. In a trial before US federal judge Loretta A. Preska, in 2018, Museveni and his foreign Minister Sam Kuteesa were mentioned for receiving a bribe of US$ 500,000 each, in exchange for business advantages from China Energy Company Limited (CEFC China).

Regional analysts say that the case provides “only a tiny example” of how far mired in the cesspit of corruption the upper echelon of the Museveni government, including him, are. According to the damned indictment, Museveni (whose big, bald and glowering picture was shown on the courtroom screen with the caption in capital letters: “EXHIBIT 1510”) received a bribe amounting to US$500,000” (greatklakeswatch)

Nepotism

Talking of nepotism, Museveni’s record is way bigger than that of all his predecessors put together. Museveni has on different occasions said that while ex-President Idi Amin Dada ensured people in West Nile were in many positions of government and the military, Milton Obote’s prejudice favoured the people from the Acholi and Lango sub-regions. He then goes on to hoodwink Ugandans and indeed the world that he is different, when actually his track record makes him worse.

During an interview in 2015 with Kenyan journalist, Jeff Koinange, Museveni couldn’t have made it any clearer. He said: “I am working for myself, I am not working for other people. I am working for my grandchildren, my children.”

In January 2017, Museveni also declared that he is not a servant or an employee of anybody but a person who fights for himself and his beliefs. “I am not an employee. I hear some people saying that I am their servant; I am not a servant of anybody," he said.

"I am not your servant. I am just a freedom fighter; I am fighting for myself, for my belief; that’s how I come in. If anybody thinks you gave me a job, he is deceiving himself." Starting with his nucleus family, he appointed his wife, Janet Museveni, as the powerful Minister of Education and his son, the meteorically promoted Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as head of the overbearing Special Force Group. 

It is highly expected that in 2026, Museveni is likely to anoint Muhoozi as his successor because he found that no other Ugandans have the vision for the country except his family.   

On the other hand, he has anointed a semi-god in his younger brother, Gen Caleb Akandwanaho, aka Salim Saleh. Despite having no formal leadership position, there is no lucrative government contract that is signed without going through his hands. No appointment in government is done without Saleh’s consent and he has lately assumed the name “Chief Listener’. He will summon any Minister and order him or her to give so and so a tender, regardless of their competence.

Nepotism has become Museveni’s mode of governance. An incident last week reveals how two children of Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa – a daughter and a son – were appointed as Ugandan diplomats representing different countries, and they will work under close supervision of their father.

Already, another daughter – Shartsi Musherure Kutesa – was controversially ‘anointed’ as MP for Mawogola North, replacing her father who had represented the area for decades.  Sedo Museveni, another brother of the President who had contested the same seat cried foul that his votes had been rigged. The Kutesa family is not any other Ugandan family. It’s very close to Museveni’s through marriage. Museveni’s son, Muhoozi, is married to Charlotte Kutesa, who has herself benefitted from her father-in-law’s largesse. 

Last year, as Covid-19 wreaked havoc, a report from the Ugandan ministry of finance linked Charlotte Kutesa- Museveni’s daughter in law and her sister Ishta Muganga Kutesa, to a fraudulent multi-billion deal to supply oxygen cylinders to hospitals for use by Covid-19 patients.

On May 6, 2020, the two sisters, through their company Silverbacks Pharmacy Ltd signed a Shs6.4bn contract to supply and install oxygen plants at Mulago National Referral and Entebbe Hospital. The contract also required the firm to supply 450 cylinders, regulators, humidifier bottles and cannulas.

Consequently, the Shs6.4bn invoice was paid by June 30. Yet the Kutesas had neither made deliveries nor installations by September 2020 when the monitoring teams did their field visits at Mulago and Entebbe. This nepotism deal within Museveni’s family may have led to deaths of Ugandans which the two sisters will never   account for.

In the NRM and Museveni, Ugandans had hoped to finally get a government that was going to be people-centered and address all issues of poverty, security and lack of inclusivity that they have faced for quite a long time, since the country’s independence.  “The Museveni of today cannot recognize the Museveni of 1986 because they speak totally different languages”, a regional analyst told this website.

Regional issues

One of Museveni’s dreams of staying in power for long was to become the first President of the East African Federation. His relationship with the neighbours where he does not even subscribe to the East African integration principle that advocates for free movement of people and goods defeats his dream. Ugandans were making millions of dollars by exporting goods to Rwanda, before Museveni decided to support terror groups against the government of Rwanda. The Ugandan businesses are now counting heavy losses after losing the Rwandan market. Museveni does not care since his family has enough wealth.

The terror groups like RNC of Kayumba Nyamwasa and FDLR made up of remnants of the former Rwandan army responsible for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi are now working with Uganda facilitated by its Chieftaincy of Military intelligence (CMI) in their plot against the government and people of Rwanda. Rwandans who travel to Uganda are branded spies and arrested, tortured and sometimes even killed. The spirit of regional integration has been lost.

The question one can ask probably is, will Museveni change his attitude towards Rwanda in this new term? The writing on the wall does not display any promising bright picture. For example, despite the cold bilateral relations, Rwanda acted in good neighbourliness and in diplomatic spirit by sending the State Minister in Charge of Regional Cooperation, Prof. Nshuti Manasseh, who represented President Kagame during Museveni’s swearing in ceremony.

However, at the backdrop of supporting Rwandan terror groups, a CMI mouthpiece known as pearltimes.co.ug, did not see it worth appreciating that President Kagame made a positive step to affirm good neighbourliness and wished the Ugandan President well. In their mean article titled "This man Kagame!” they fail to realise the bigger picture of Rwanda’s gesture and simply complain that Rwanda sent a junior Minister. 

Since Museveni came to power in 1986, his time to think for the benefit of Ugandans and the region was short lived. The biggest time of his rule is for his personal and family benefits, as he said it himself.

So, for those who expect Museveni to make a positive impact for Uganda and the region in his supposedly last term, better be assured that there is nothing new.  It will be the same old song, sang by the same family choir, led by the same old man.