By Zacharia Kanyonyozi
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Writer Zacharia Kanyonyozi examines Ugandan Dictator Yoweri Museveni‘s plans to coronate his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as the next ruler of Uganda.
The Great Dictator was released in 1940 and stars one of the greatest comedians of all time, Charlie Chaplin. Using comedy as a vehicle, Chaplin was able to satirize the German Dictator Adolf Hitler with resounding success.
Indeed, the film was such a success that it became Chaplin’s most commercially successful film. Modern critics have praised it as a historically significant film, one of the greatest comedy films ever made.
Now, dear reader, it seems to be getting a reboot. This time starring The Great Dictator Yoweri Museveni as himself! Oh yes!
Recently, seemingly in a bid to promote this comedy, Dictator Museveni declared, without batting an eyelid, that his son, Junior Dictator Muhoozi Kainerugaba, advised him to fix Kampala roads.
In this comedy of manners, Dictator Museveni said Baby Doc Muhoozi came to him with the idea of involving the national army in repairing the city’s rampant potholes.
“Gen Muhoozi asked me to involve the SFC (Special Forces Command) in doing the Kampala potholes,” Papa Doc Museveni revealed at the recent Uganda Prisons pass-out function.
“Upcountry the roads are very good but here apparently, you are very rich in potholes.”
According to Gen Museveni, Gen Muhoozi came to him because some companies contracted by the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) had quoted Shs. 12 billion to fix the potholes, yet the SFC could do it for much less.
Please, hold your laughter. It gets worse.
“We have the SFC engineering brigade, and (Gen Muhoozi) told me they can do it at only Shs 2.7 billion. Look at that kind of waste. With the money they are asking you can do 5 times that work!”
Mind you, the UPDF engineering brigade, to whom SFC is subordinate, was involved in 76 billion procurement scandal in 2017.
Thereupon, the former Electoral Commission chairman Eng. Badru Kiggundu, the man who stole the most elections in Ugandan history, was appointed to investigate this procurement scandal that had engulfed Uganda’s Ministry of Defence and the national army – Uganda Peoples Defence Forces’ Kaweweta Recruit Training School.
Gen. Museveni is thus being consistently comical here on a level Chaplin would envy.
With his latest comedic turn, is he trying to say he has just learnt of the said waste now?
The cost of public infrastructure projects in Uganda compared to the rest of the region is notoriously high, and Dictator Museveni knows this.
He is fully aware that the Uganda Institution of Professional Engineers (UIPE) organized the 26th National Technology Conference and Exhibition (NTCE) between Thursday 17th – Friday 18th August 2023 Hotel Africana, Kampala.
He is fully aware because his ministers, such as Gen. Katumba Wamala, the Minister of Works and Transport, attended that conference.
It was revealed at that conference that Uganda’s roads are far more expensive than in Kenya and Rwanda.
The conference stated that in 2018 the commissioning of the 51-kilometer Entebbe Expressway was budgeted to cost 476 million dollars, translating to about 9.3 million dollars or 34 billion shillings per kilometer.
In comparison, Kenya’s 50-km Thika Super Highway cost about 360 million dollars equivalent to 7 million or 26 billion Uganda Shillings.
These costs, on building Potemkin roads in Uganda, are high because they are inflated by the Museveni Junta in order to rob the Ugandan taxpayer on the sly.
Gen. Museveni, as many Ugandans know, contracts his own companies to build the roads and inflates the price of construction to match his gluttonous appetite.
In the process of the fleecing, shoddy work is done and that is why Kampala is known as “the pothole capital of the world”!
So Dictator Museveni is now having his son and his son’s assemblage of toy soldiers further rob Ugandans, which is comedy of the most tragic kind.
