My jaw hit the floor last week when it was revealed that the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) was “sold” to a Chinese businessman.
While the “buyer” had documents to prove he had paid for
UNOC, he did not or declined to reveal, who he dealt with and how much he had
paid. He was blissfully unaware the company was a government entity, or so he
said.
This came hot on the heals of another con perpetuated in the
energy ministry where some Serbian ”Investors” were relieved of more than a
billion shillings and the con artists had set them up for another $50m payout.
"If this is your only country; if this is where you intend to while away your years; if this is the country you hope to raise your children and your children’s children in, you should not laugh off these incidents in between sips of your beer...
Both scams show a level of preparation and sophistication
that can not be learnt from a text book, but have come from practice and long
experience. The scammers have been honing their skills on us, getting away with
fleecing Ugandans because they have cover from higher officials, who can
command the justice and law system to look the other way.
How did we get to this point?
There is a backhanded complement in there somewhere. In years
gone by the big scams were of reams of paper going missing or bicycle procured,
which never landed or other instances of pilferage.
But as the economy has grown and the budget with it --- in
2013 the national budget was sh12trillion compared to this years sh52trillion
budget, the corrupt and their schemes have grown as well.
"As a result Uganda’s reputation now rivals a certain west African nation, which is the buzz word for everything corrupt....
Attracted by our growing reputation for corruption, unsavory
types (the kind who carry $20m in bags around Kampala) have flocked to our
shores.
While it is understandable that the Fortune 500 are not
falling over themselves to come to Uganda – our market is too small, we are
clearly not getting the next best thing, as the cost of doing business, with
corruption added on is too prohibitive for them.
It cannot be emphasized enough that corruption is a terrible thing. The theories about allowing our elite to crudely accumulate wealth as a way to build an indigenous capital base is a fallacy and does not hold up to the most cursory study....
If this held true, in the three decades since 1986 we would
see some of these crude accumulators, legitimize their business and turn up as
some of the biggest tax payers or employers or would have developed a national
presence. It has not happened and it will not happen.
They have squandered
hundreds of billions of shillings on questionable initiatives, hairbrained
projects, white elephants – all private, and have nothing meaningful to show
for their access to the state coffers. So let us bury that idea once and for
all.
Beyond concentrating public resources in a few hands, it
also denies us quality public goods in education, health, infrastructure and
even security, the ingredients needed to climb the social ladder for the
least of our brothers.
As a result of their dubious ways, thousands if not millions
of citizens are not getting a fair chance at improving their standard of
living.
Corruption is a terrible monster that feeds off itself,
growing, squeezing out honest endeavour, leading to frustration and despondency
of the general population.
Our corrupt do not stay in their cocoon for long, especially
if they are not caught. They soon link up with regional and international
networks to extract more and more. They
are not very discriminating about the networks they fraternize with and very
soon we will have organized criminals not only roaming our streets but getting
photo opportunities with and bending the ear of the high and mighty.
The problem with these criminals is that when you give them
an inch, they will want a mile.
They will not stop at just emptying state coffers but will want to protect their enterprise by compromising politicians and security. So very soon, if it is not already happening, they will be smuggling drugs, guns, wild life trophies and vulnerable people right in front of our eyes, with full cover of the law....
They will turn the country in to a hub of illicit trade,
benefitting a few elites while impoverishing the rest of us. These actions will
see us ostracized from the international community.
It has happened before.
In Montenegro, a country in eastern Europe, in attempt to circumvent
sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia, the leased their ports and airports
to cigarette smugglers. With afoot in the door these gangs stayed on long after
sanctions had been lifted on Yugoslavia and Montenegro had broken away.
The gangs so entwined themselves in the country’s running
that the Italy once had w arrant out on the head of former Prime Minister Milo
Djukanovic for his role in smuggling cigarettes.
Essentially the corrupt and their cronies can hold the state hostage, to a point where it becomes impossible to move on them—except for few sacrificial lambs. Inevitably this leads to major dysfunction....
Believe it or not we are not the most corrupt country in the
world or even in our region, but that is a competition we should not be aiming
to win.
