In the lifestyle of a hyena, when it wants to start eating its own young, it will first accuse them of smelling like a goat, and that is what is happening at the Ministry of Works and Transport.
On Thursday, my brother, the Minister of Works and Transport, Mr. Fred Byamukama, again made another verbal diarrhoea in the press, accusing officials within his own ministry of using insider knowledge of planned road projects to buy up property along the routes and then inflate compensation claims on those same properties.
In his statement, Mr. Byamukama claimed that the ministry had established that along the Nakawuka–Nateete Road, a significant number of the buildings standing in the road’s path belong to the very officials tasked with setting compensation rates for structures and other property within the right of way.
To me, I would like to advise the minister: please name those officials so that Ugandans will know that whatever you say has evidence. Otherwise, I can tell you that ever since you started accusing your own officials of corruption, Ugandans are now taking your words like the usual preaching in churches, saying that Jesus will soon be coming.
How I wish you could name and show the properties each one of them owns, like you had the guts to report to the President the names of engineers you suspected of having eaten government money.
Let me also hope that the construction work you are doing at Nakigalala Hills will not require you to divert Nakawuka Road to that place, as this will be our topic.
Hon. Minister, without attaching concrete evidence to your allegations, you will soon be like a man who climbs a mango tree to eat mangoes while defecating from the top, forgetting that he will still have to come down from that mango tree and walk back to his home. And what happens if you step in your own poo?
We all don’t need corruption in our country, but we should not use it as a tool to criminalise others without sufficient evidence.
The writer is a senior veteran journalist.
