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| Rwabwogo is a misguided missile |
| Wafula Oguttu |
| The
Daily Monitor of August 30 and a few days later, the New Vision
of September 4, carried an article by Mr Odrek Rwabwogo attacking
Mr Andrew Mwenda for his article, “Isn’t the First
Family Fleecing Us?” in Sunday Monitor of August 20. Rwabwogo is a son -in-law of President Yoweri Museveni and Mwenda had mentioned his name in the article. I did not have anything to do with Mwenda’s article nor was my name mentioned in it anywhere. I was therefore not impressed by Rwabwogo dragging my name into his war with Mwenda although from the spirit of the article, it was apparently a proxy war. Apart from lacking focus and depth, Rwabwogo the writer acted like an unguided missile. In the process, he hit innocent targets. He attacked me for two reasons. First, because according to him sometime in 1993 he applied to join the Uganda Think Foundation (UTTF) as Administrative Officer but “was later told by Karuhanga (Elly) that “I had won but Oguttu who had been a panellist had told his colleagues that he would not have another Munyankole in the organisation”. Imagine that! My second crime is “Ten years of Oguttu and Obbo (Onyango-Obbo) tutoring (at The Monitor) have produced a rabid and reckless politician (Mwenda), not a professional journalist that I thought you wanted to be”. That I turned Mwenda into one of the “many kids like you who feed us with garbage everyday on airwaves and in print and expect the nation to sit and listen”. Rwabwogo then takes a strong swipe at the Monitor newspaper and KFM Radio for not only feeding their audiences with garbage but also for the “stories regurgitated many times... and the daily noise that pollutes the air on the radio... just because they are associated with some of your major advertisers and political sponsors”. I have read Rwabwogo’s article twice and the only message I see him trying to convey to readers about Oguttu is that he is anti- Banyankole and anti- First Family and goes everywhere indoctrinating people to fight his sectarian war. I really despise individuals who try to use their minority groups like tribes for protection against accusations of lacking transparency and accountability. Rwabwogo’s shortcomings are not of Banayankole. His failure to secure a job with UTTF had nothing to do with him being a Munyankole. He just did not measure up to the task. He had just left college and he had never worked anywhere. So he could not be entrusted with the task of setting up an office for the new knowledge organisation even after the Board Chairman Karuhanga had brought him in through the window and tried to impose him in the job without any interview. Interviews were conducted and a more experienced, more exposed and definitely smarter person was recruited for the job. It had nothing to do with the region where he came from. Indeed when he later left for a better job with Uganda Wildlife Authority, he was replaced by another Ugandan who happens to have been born a Munyankole and Oguttu was still on the panel. I am amused by the fact Rwabwogo tried to imply that he is a better journalist than Mwenda and most of them around. Or that he is a bigger brain power. Or that he cares more about Uganda. Really? Where is the evidence? Why does Rwabwogo think Mwenda is the only nincompoop who would without questions chew and swallow Oguttu’s poisonous weeds and not Robert Kabushenga, Onapito Ekomoloit and Mary Karooro Okurut all of whom also had some tutoring from him? We do not need to say much about Rwabwogo. He knows which side of his bread is buttered. He knows why he is where he is today on the socio-economic ladder. It is not only Mwenda who knows it. It is an open secret that Rwabwogo’s company, TERP gets government contracts mainly because it is owned by the son-in-law of President Museveni. Period. This song accusing those of us who founded the Monitor as being anti-First Family and sometimes extended to anti-Bahima has been around since 1992. It is a silly song because those who sing it do so as a way of trying to protect themselves from criticism for wrong doing. They want us to fear them and shut up even when we see them committing crimes openly against the people of Uganda. When you are sharp and critical like Mwenda, they will try to destroy you by either buying you or blackmailing you, or throwing you in jail or even “harvesting” you to use their word for killing. As owners and editors at the Monitor, we were hated by some elements in State House from the word go because we were independent and critical of the powers that be. After Museveni had destroyed the political parties, DP and UPC, it is only the Monitor that still remained standing as a forum where ideas critical to his government could be entertained and published. The paper was a pain in the flesh of his clique of primitive accumulators of wealth who were not difficult to identify by their life style. When State House and relatives, in-laws and friends of the President are accused of greed for power and wealth, when they are accused of ‘Bourbonic’ opulence, ostentation, wastefulness, corruption, double standards, nepotism, discrimination etc, it is not “garbage” but what is seen clearly by many. Surely, is it garbage, for example, to say that poverty is on the increase among Ugandans, that there is persecutions of Museveni’s political opponents some of who suffer extra-judicial executions in the so-called “Safe Houses”, that Museveni is hanging on to power through buying and stealing of votes, that UPDF and all other security organs are partisan and have been captured by the President for his personal use, that there is no equal opportunity in employment in public institutions, that because of bad government policies and poor planning the country is suffering frequent power load-shedding, that because of bad environment policies Uganda’s rivers and lakes are drying up, that there are secret State House scholarships for the children of Museveni’s relatives and friends, that people of northern and north- eastern Uganda have been subjected to discrimination and untold sufferance for 20 years as a result of a well designed plan to keep the President in power, that Museveni has created a small Uganda of the rich and a big Uganda of the poor whose role is mainly to sell him votes for Shs200 each every five years or that the President is a militarist who is averse to dialogue and loves wars which have ruined the national economy? There are facts and figures to show that all these things are true and glaring for even children to see. And they have nothing to do with Banyankole. We know those who are responsible and accountable for them. They come from all over Uganda. People like Rwabwogo who are direct beneficiaries of the decadent system should learn to carry their own crosses as individuals. There is no community or tribal cross or collective guilt before the law. When your time comes and it will certainly come, be sure to face the music alone. Stop hiding behind the innocent people, whether Banyankole or Basamia. Museveni, his government, party and the State are increasingly becoming one and the same thing. The four institutions have been fused into a personal power and rule mainly for the benefit of the First Family, relatives, in-laws and friends. The Rwabwogos had better wake up, own up and try to solve this crisis instead of attacking and abusing everybody who dares say that the Emperor is naked when he is actually naked. It is ironical that Rwabwogo is telling Mwenda to “have learned nothing like the Bourbons in France who ruled the country before the French Revolution” when he should be saying those things to his in-laws at Nakesero. Does he see that the revolution is already on? The author is retired Editor-In-Chief of The Monitor. He is now FDC spokesman wafuguttu@yahoo.com |