Museveni preaches patience over compensation in ‘difficult’ Teso

L-R: NRM flag bearer for the Katakwi District Woman MP seat Violet Akurut, party presidential flag bearer Yoweri Museveni, Education minister Jessica Alupo and Eastern Youth MP Peter Ogwang during the President’s recent tour of Teso sub-region. PHOTOS BY MICHAEL KAKUMIRIZI 

For Simon Peter Okalebo, life has been bleak since 1998 when rebels of the Uganda People’s Army attacked his home in Toroma, Katakwi District, and herded off 68 cows that were the bread and butter of the family.

Though his parents were able to toil and see him through school, his other siblings were unable to finish school, and are now part of the ugly statistics of a generation in the Teso-sub-region that embodies the scars of the insurgency the sub-region endured in the 1980s.

So when Okalebo braved the sweltering sun and bothersome security checks to flock to Toroma headquarters grounds to listen to President Museveni plea for a fifth term, he was confident the President would make a grand announcement regarding the matter of compensation for the people who lost property and livestock.

Mentioned in passing
But Mr Okalebo was mistaken; the President only mentioned the issue of compensation in passing, at the end of his address, urging patience and arguing that government works “step-by-step”.

With rough estimates putting the number of cattle lost in Teso sub-region at more than 500,000, the matter of compensation is at the heart and soul of life in the area. Rebel attacks were followed by Karimojong raids -that involved razing down of stores of grain and flour, leaving a previously prosperous community on the ropes.

“It is as if Teso is not represented at national level and no one cares about the plight of the people here. Our cattle were taken but we have waited in vain to be compensated,” Okalebo says ahead of Museveni’s address.

But the President, who surely has got a briefing about how critical the matter of compensation is, chooses the easy option of giving promises and chiding Opposition politicians who have been pointing it out.

“I hear some people saying you have not compensated cattle, you have not done this and that. You cannot do everything at the same time. We do something today [and] tomorrow, we do something else,” Museveni says. That has been his message from Kumi to Serere to Kaberamaido to Soroti.

“My father had 68 cattle. We grew up drinking milk but now it’s no more,” Okalebo says in response to Museveni.

With such misgivings, Museveni’s handlers in Teso sub-region, despite publicly brimming with confidence, will privately warn that improving, or even maintaining the 75 per cent vote he secured in the region will be “difficult”.

The FDC flag bearer dwelled on the matter of compensation when he campaigned in Teso sub-region on December 10, four days after Museveni had blown hot and cold over the issue.
And the infighting among local NRM politicians has not helped matters.

After eating his words on the promise to give a shot at the presidency, Capt Mike Mukula, the NRM’s go-to-man in the region, is now seen as Mr Inconsistent.

Local politicians were not amused with Mukula’s stunts at the President’s rallies where he would travel around in a chopper before giving an address. Local NRM handlers were concerned that Mukula was pre-empting the President’s message.

Education minister Jessica Alupo and the Eastern Youth MP Peter Ogwang do not see eye to eye. Alupo accuses Ogwang, who is now gunning for the Usuk County seat, of being behind her loss in the NRM primaries for the Katakwi Woman MP seat.

At the Usuk rally in Katakwi District, Mr Museveni was thrust in the uncomfortable position of inviting the NRM flag bearer for the Katakwi Woman MP seat Violet Akurut, alongside Jessica Alupo and Ogwang to the podium.