The current move by parliament to have sittings in four regions of Uganda is disturbing and part of an established trend, where public officials seek to extract the maximum they can from the treasury and Ugandans be damned.
Last week parliament announced it is going to have sittings
in West Nile, Lango and Karamoja ostensibly to bring the workings of parliament
nearer the people. They would spend at least three days a week in each region.
In the face of it, a noble endeavor but it can be argued there are more cost
effective way of doing this.
This means parliament will have to provide for the more than
500 MPs to make the upcountry trips, in addition to about 200 staff, per diems
all around. It has been reported that, at the minimum this will saddle Ugandans
with a bill of sh5b a day.
"We should be concerned, because this is part of a trend of
shifting resources away from production to consumption, a trend that history
has shown does not end well...
In their book “Why Nations Fail” authors Daron Acemoglu and
James Robinson, after researching centuries of data on political evolution,
came to the succinct conclusion that nations fail when their institutions are
more extractive than inclusive.
Invariably extractive institutions derive from extractive
politics where the power elite use these institutions to consolidate their
power.
Extractive institutions are those that concentrate wealth
and opportunity in the hands of a few as opposed to inclusive institutions in
which broad based participation is encouraged, property rights are protected,
which in turn foster innovation, investment and economic growth.
It does not take a nuclear scientist to work out that the
inevitable outcome is poverty and wealth inequalities for the greater majority
of the population.
It’s a vicious cycle, which if let alone leads to social
chaos and political instability.
"These are serious issues, especially in this time when the
economy is still struggling to recover from the Covid-pandemic, money is short
and for many hopelessness is beginning to set in...
The lessons of the book, written in 2012, endure and we
would be best advised to pay attention.
Uganda’s economy has grown by an average of six percent for
the last 38 years, the longest single stretch of unimpeded growth in the
history of the country. The challenge is that this growth is not being
equitably enjoyed.
As it is the urban populations – despite our incessant
whining, have been the biggest beneficiaries of this growth. So much so that,
more than half the nation’s economic output (and I fear this is an
understatement) is concentrated in Kampala.
This means that while the rest of the nation is struggling
to get into middle income status -- $1,100 the per capita GDP of Kampala is
easily over $5,000.
We have historical antecedents to this, the colonial state
concentrated opportunities in a few hands, educating a handful of Ugandans for
instance – there were 300 A-Level students at Independence and focusing
infrastructure on extraction of raw materials rather than on availing access to
markets for all.
Our post-independence governments have continued the trend,
perpetuating the cycle of benefits accruing to a small group
disproportionately.
"This move by parliament is just a symptom of this disturbing trajectory towards a failed nation....
There are hundreds, if not thousands of school going
children or sick in those very same regions that would prefer that money is
channeled towards education and health services.
The education ministry says it would take about sh14m to
build a primary school classroom, so about sh98m to build seven classrooms add
another two million for the head master’s office to round off the number to
sh100m. So the sh5b a day spent on MPs pontificating and fulminating means 50
primary schools go unbuilt, a primary school every third district. So the three
days the want to deliberate per region would account for a primary school a
district.
Do we want to go into the beneficial ripple effect of
educating a few hundred kids a district?
Or that Mulago spends about sh200,000 per out patient
annually and therefore 75,000 out patients would be denied treatment at Mulago
because we chose to splurge on an upcountry junket for MPs.
Whichever you look at it, this is an ill-conceived
expenditure we can do without, as a poor country trying to make sure everyone
benefits from the miraculous recovery and growth of the last four decades.
Let us be serious. We are already on a very slippery slope, what with all our corruption, for us to indulge in such flights of fancy. Whether we continue to the slippery slope’s logical conclusion or not, will depend on how our political elite and public servants are restrained from gouging themselves at the public trough.
