Removing Museveni: Why you don't see Opposition asking Ugandans not to litter

It is very likely that our next leader will come here and repeat the mistakes Mr Museveni has made.

There is a whole society of people who believe that Uganda can change by some magic if they manage to change one individual occupant of State House Entebbe.

I keep thinking through this and I am here to explain why that is such a reckless idea. Let me place a disclaimer here before some minds go on with what some frustration-laden minds always do. I am not a supporter of the NRM government and certainly not their voter or a voter for anyone. I have voted once in life and that was in 1996.

Since then so many things have happened to me that stopped me believing in both politics as a solution for social problems as well as politics as a driver for change and development.

So my views here are born of the fact that I see things from a place a of disinterest which makes me less inclined to emotional attachments to either keeping Mr Museveni in power or getting rid of him fast. I am very sure that such emotions blind us all from sober analysis of what our exact problem is and it’s objective feasible remedy.

There was a time our fore parents were of the view that sending away the white man was the silver bullet to fixing all they had to fix at the time. I am not suggesting that the white man imposing his rule and subjugating a local population was the best of ideas in the management of African nations. Far from the truth.

But was sending the white man away when we did the best thing to do is all I ask. Would it not have been better if those old men took time to learn from that very same white man the rigours of management of the complex amalgamation, Uganda that the white man had just created and managed for some time?

I want to think they were of the view that sending the white man away was the more difficult of the two things around. The simpler one was learning on the job how to effectively run a nation.

It is very possible that they never even thought about effective running of the nation. What they could and may have imagined for sure was that for as long as one of us runs an African nation that is best and most appreciated by all when juxtaposed with being run efficiently by a foreigner.

What a reckless naïve comparison! We can have a separate debate some day on what is better? Being run haphazardly by a local learning their ropes as they get by or efficiently by an experienced high-handed foreigner?

Foreign national sports teams in many an African nation have probably settled this argument long after independence and there is not one complaining for now. One day we shall come to the conclusion that to effectively run a disorganized nation like Uganda high handedness ought to be part of the recipe. We shall as well go on to debate how much of it is necessary.

I do not see a visible deliberate effort invested in learning how to efficiently and effectively run Uganda from those who think Mr Museveni has run this nation badly and I guess he probably has made many mistakes as ought to have been the case.

Mr Museveni himself probably thought that once you get rid of Milton Obote and his kind running Uganda will happen smoothly since you will have great intentions and a solid ideology. Now he is wrestling with stopping his own cadres from stealing from the nation. I doubt he knows where exactly the rain started to beat him and his 1986 bunch.

What this ought to teach us, that it never does, is that Uganda is difficult to run and very stubborn to fix. Investing time in learning to run it and where exactly its problems are should be our central focus. We must ask ourselves where did the past leaders fail?

Mr Museveni is a key part of our solution. He must tell us where exactly he has found major bottlenecks. He should tell us what has made dealing with corruption hard.

The assumption that Mr Museveni wakes up each morning to derail Uganda and send it to the dogs makes no sense to anyone who has been in a class where logic is taught. Politicians accuse sitting leaders of that when they are misleading a population that has been fed on ill-funded universal primary education - and I was not.

It is very likely that our next leader will come here and repeat the mistakes Mr Museveni has made. Since he or she will want to win an election, they will most likely not ask or make Ugandans do the necessary difficult things or make the imperative changes that can make us a better, more organized nation.

This is why you do not see anyone in the Opposition asking Ugandans not to litter or to not pay their taxes!

A penny for my thoughts as Elvis leaves the building…