At the close of the month of October 2021, Disaster Preparedness Minister Hillary Onek penned a lose minute to his boss, Prime Minister Robina Nabbanja lamenting about her methods of work in regard to disaster management operations.
The Minister sounded to be challenging the technical capability of his boss in this aspect.
In June 2021 President Museveni took the Nation by surprise and appointed in key cabinet positions individuals of humble background and personalities, after an election that was characterised by raising voices of the common people who echoed poor service delivery as their major concern against the NRM Government.
For decades the President had been picking most of top Government leaders from an elite and ‘rich profile’ categories in different professional and political experiences.
For example, for the slot of Prime Minister, the most recent three holders of the docket were the late Prof Nsibambi, a prolific political science academician, Amama Mbabazi, an NRA bushwar political wing historical, long time minister and former Attorney General; then Nabbanja’s predecessor Ndugu Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, himself a political actor from the early post independence time, diplomat and long time minister.
Rt.Hon Mbabazi and his successor Rt Hon Rugunda had both occupied top positions at the NRM Party Headquarters as Secretary General and Chairperson Electoral Commission respectively, the time Rt.Hon Nabbanja was an RDC.
A comparison of the above personalities with the current Primier Nabbanja in terms of experience and profile leaves the stereo types and conservative elitists in a delusion of some sort.
They seem to struggle with appreciating the reality that what an ordinary Ugandan in Kikubo, vulnerable communities and the underprivileged care about is common language service delivery, as opposed to the elitism and beauracratic rigidities and snobbery.
Rt. Hon Nabbanja, a former District Local Government Councillor, Resident District Commissioner, Member of Parliament, Partliamentary Commissioner and junior Minister; she is in reality a well experienced person and best candidate for the Job of Prime Minister, in a political term faced with the dire need for Government to address the concerns and plight of the ordinary population in ordinary but transformational methods.
Nabbanja’s profile and work experience drew her closer to the people’s real life situations of social economic aspects while in Local Council leadership, understanding of Government policy implementation and supervision while RDC, National policy mapping and formulation while Parliamentary Commissioner and cabinet business while Minister.
It is therefore self defeating for the long time Disaster Preparedness Minister Eng Hillary Onek to fail to acknowledge the fact that his boss is operating from a realistic point of view, where the ultimate goal is to deliver services to the common person, as opposed to the rigid beauracratic gymnastics he and colleagues have employed for so many years but yielded less to public expectations.
For example, matters of climate hostilities have occurred in Bududa in all the 15 years the Minister talks about in his ‘Onek’s Lamentations Chapter 2’, the refugee-host community land wrangles in Kyangwali Kikube District have claimed People’s jobs and lives, relief items used as commercial capital and some times political patronage in the same period with different probe reports unimplemented while technocrats in the disaster preparedness department continue to enrich themselves on mostly donation funds while he presides over the ministry.
Although the experienced Minister laments about the ‘asurping’ of his docket’s roles, the end user of disaster preparedness services is appreciating the practicability of the Prime Minister’s methods.
Government’s social contract with the common person does not stop at the technocratic policy formulation and analysis but demands for crowning the process with qualitative and quantitative implementation to the satisfaction of benefitiary target populations.
Prime Minister Nabbanja has so far proved to the Nation that coordination of Government business has a lot to do with the field, the common person, service delivery; just as it is in Partliament and Cabinet. She has set a new place in the right direction which should be embraced and perhaps modified for possible technical adaption in the Government programmes monitoring system. Hon Onek ought to accept this!
For this matter, ‘ Hon Onek’s Lamentations chapter 2’, is a justification of the Prime Minister Nabbanja’s prowess at the job and indeed thanks to General Yoweri Museveni son of Kaguta, President of Uganda for his foresight when he chose to appoint the less beauracratic to supervise the beauracrats!
