The National Unity Platform (NUP) party presidential candidate, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, has pledged to prioritise the comprehensive post-war rehabilitation of northern Uganda once elected president.
Speaking to supporters at Kalongo Town Council in Agago District last Friday, where he addressed his third rally in the Acholi Sub-region, Mr Kyagulanyi said the region continues to reel in abject poverty with people’s conditions barely different from how it was 20 years ago.
‘We intend to comprehensively rehabilitate places that have in the past been devastated by war, especially northern Uganda. In the new Uganda we are seeking now, I intend to use the wealth of this country to tarmac more roads,’ he said. Mr Kyagulanyi said the roads in the north remain in a terrible state, cutting off the population from basic social services, including markets, schools, and medical facilities, among others.
‘Without better road infrastructure, we cannot develop as a people, and these are things the National Resistance Movement failed to tackle because the funds are always eaten by the corrupt,’ he added. Earlier in the afternoon, while addressing supporters at Padibe Town Council, the two-time presidential candidate said despite heavy investments by the government to rehabilitate the Acholi Sub-region, there has been limited impact on the lives of the people since the intervention does not match the exact needs of the people. Mr Kyagulanyi said his government will uplift the education and health standards of the people. ‘We intend to revamp all the programmes that have since died, the cooperative unions, the health system, free education that are already dead, we intend to revamp and build them afresh because it is not a miracle, it is possible.
‘Right now, your children are not going to school because the teachers are not being paid. Many people, especially women, are dying in hospitals because there is no medicine there, and the doctors and nurses are not being paid. This is the narrative that we seek to change as NUP,’ he said. ‘Right now, our brothers and sisters in uniform are the least paid people and they live in terrible conditions and yet these are the same people who are set to beat and torture us. I am here to tell you and all the soldiers, as soon as I become President, I made this promise in 2021 and I am repeating it, I will enhance their salaries because they deserve better,’ he added.
The NUP leader called for unity among the people. ‘It does not matter what programmes you bring to the people of the north. No matter how many promises I make to you, for as long as we are not united, we have not reconciled, for as long as we don’t look at each other as brothers and sisters, and if we don’t have trust, all that will be empty,’ he said. He added: ‘That is why my message to the people of the north (Lango, Acholi and the entire north) is a message of unity, brotherhood, reconciliation, forgetting the past and moving forward, equality.’ Since 2002, when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was still active, the government introduced several development programmes to address the economic stagnation caused by more than two decades of insurgency in the region.
The Acholi Sub-region, like its neighbours Lango and West Nile, continues to face land disputes linked to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and cases of land grabbing. High youth unemployment, rising crime, and challenges with community reintegration have also continued to threaten peace and stability. Recently, during a thanksgiving ceremony at Patongo-Akwe Primary School in Patongo Town Council, Agago District, President Museveni said the Acholi Sub-region and other areas still struggling with poverty rejected his strategies and initiatives aimed at fighting poverty. ‘Regarding poverty in some parts of Uganda, including Acholi, the problem is that people don’t listen to what we say. What [the] Chief Justice is saying is what we were saying in 1996, but people don’t listen; they just ignore,’ Mr Museveni said.
According to research by the Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises project on post-war recovery in northern Uganda, released late last year, feelings of economic and social insecurity continue to grow in the region-despite the war having ended nearly two decades ago. For many people, their standards of living still hovers around the poverty line. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened, and food security has shown little or no improvement. The report notes that about half of the population still cannot access treatment for common illnesses.
2021 elections
Mr Kyagulanyi is now aiming to triple the number of votes he got from the East Acholi districts of Kitgum, Pader, Agago and Lamwo, where President Museveni beat him in the 2021 General Election. In Pader District, Kyagulanyi managed only 8,292 votes (18.68 percent) out of 47,632 total votes, while Museveni got 28,233 votes (63.61 percent). In Agago, Kyagulanyi scored 10,559 votes (16.51 percent) compared to Museveni’s 47,696 votes (74.57 percent). Kitgum District was slightly better for Kyagulanyi, but Museveni still led with 26,880 votes (52.73 percent) against Kyagulanyi’s 14,869 votes (29.17 percent).