Ugandans will soon start seeing and questioning the kilograms of meat that anyone working in government buys, thinking it is taxpayers’ money being misused.
This is the case of Hajjat Namyalo, the National Coordinator for ONC, who has become a topic in every corner among Ugandans after she gifted her five-year-old son a vehicle worth Shs300m for his birthday.
My question is, what if Madam Hajjat had gotten a loan from the bank to buy her son a vehicle as a gift? It is only in Africa whereby when you find a poor man eating chicken at his home, you should know that the person is either sick or that the chicken he was eating was sick and about to die.
My advice to Ugandans who are castigating Madam Namyalo is that let us learn to work hard and save the little we get.
The challenge with many Ugandans is that we have failed to embrace the culture of saving. Our work is to eat and drink all that we get, only to sit and attack whoever shows off something. When you get a person in the bar drinking, he drinks whatever he has as if he received an announcement that breweries were to be closed the next day.
I remember in 2015, government compensated the affected people during the construction of Moroto-Soroti road works. One man from Orungo Corner in Katakwi District was given Shs150m as compensation, but unfortunately, instead of this gentleman planning well with the money he was compensated, he went and mobilized all his in-laws to enjoy life in one of the most powerful hotels in Soroti for two weeks, drinking expensive wines, using a special car to buy chapati for them from Soroti Town, and taking special drives to go and shave their hair. By the end of two weeks, the gentleman was left with only Shs20m. On starting to build a house, he failed to complete it due to lack of money, yet he had money that could have finished building his house and left some balance.
Others who utilized their money well are the ones who have built nice houses around Orungo.
This is the case with Madam Namyalo. Women are very good at planning. A single coin from a woman’s hand will produce three basins of coins compared to a coin in a man’s hand. So Madam Namyalo, being a woman, has been saving her small earnings until they have now accumulated to where they are.
I am very happy they have not named her an Illuminati woman because that has been the talk of many Ugandans after seeing someone achieve something unusual.
My advice to Madam Hajjat Namyalo: please ignore whoever is attacking you. No one attacked you when you started saving, so please enjoy your life while there is still time.
You have never broken any bank. What you are spending is what you got through your sweat. You know when you are helping a blind man to peel his groundnuts, you must keep whistling so that he becomes comfortable that you are not eating his groundnuts. So in this case, even if you want to show all your bank statements to prove yourself safe, still Ugandans will never believe.
The writer is a senior veteran journalist.
