Nodding Disease: Felling the Acholi “Trees” by drying the foliage

 KILLING ACHOLI

Few days ago, I posted a request on my Facebook wall to Acholi MPs, asking them to update us on the state of the nodding disease in the region. Not one MP responded, except for their rather pesky apologists.

Our politicians are delicate, they tend to evade accountability and paradoxically object to critics vehemently over under performance. However, the law of evolution is clear – when the birds learn to fly without stopping, the hunter must also learn to shoot without missing. We have to develop resilience to pursue them relentlessly, respectfully.

The progression of the nodding disease, its dehumanizing impact on communities, families, and victims, and government's strategic neglect of the sufferings is disturbing and inhuman. Allowing this disease to feed unfettered on our children, is really felling the Acholi trees by drying out its foliage first.

This is an extended war of attrition against the Acholi people.

Last week, Mr. Sudhir Byaruhanga of NTV's Panorama program unveiled the extent of the nodding disease in Acholi region. This situation brought a chilling sense of national shame to Parliament and Ministry of health. This week, a reactionary Acholi Parliamentary Group woke up and decided to visit these children.

The NTV documentary exposed a lot of neglect and mobilized national support for these children. Towards the end of the documentary, one sees a dramatic Deputy Speaker, Rt. Hon. Jacob Oulanya, demonstrating a show of empathy. He even tried to squeeze a tear from one eye, which refused to come!

Parliament, which Hon. Oulanyah presides over, is the venue where national and supplemental budgets, and major policies are processed - debated, and passed. How often do these majority NRM MPs vote overwhelmingly for supplemental budgets, some purely for the conveniences of the ruling Party, or its leaders, while others for ameliorating drought situation in the cattle corridor?

That very NRM government Oulanyah serves has abdicated from its moral imperative of committing funds for nodding disease children of northern Uganda – an act which is unconstitutional, and in direct violation of the universal principle of health as a basic human right. The situation is dire, unjust, and morally inexcusable.

This is nothing personal to the Deputy Speaker, but, it is a shameful counterpoise to lies that voting for NRM has certain rewards. In sincerity, if such incentives existed, Hon. Oulanyah’s Omoro County could have been lavished with funding for these humiliating nodding disease victims with their struggling families.

The cost of caring for these children could never be too high for a national priority given the rampant corruption and extravagance on sectarian politics and public administration.

It is only clear that afflictions of northern Uganda are employed against the region, to punish it, and never placed as a national priority. Northern Uganda is the nagging and unwanted child of NRM's Uganda!

 In Mr. Byaruhanga's documentary, you could see that nearly all the children lived in squalid conditions of abject poverty. The poor housing, lack of food, poor hygiene, untamed environment, coupled with a demanding parental care or adult supervision needed for the safety of these children all determined mortality. Once these conditions were reversed, such that the children were provided with optimal care - medicine, food, adequate sleep, and clean environment, the children demonstrated tenacity and resilience towards recovery.

I doubt that the most the Deputy Speaker of Parliament can do to bring a spotlight on the nodding disease just wailing, or blaming doctors. The MPs could do better advocacy, lobbying, and pressuring the government and international development partners to lend a hand against a human catastrophe. This disease is a matter of global health. Without funds for medicine, care facility, and qualified staff, doctors are of little use.

Unfortunately, even UNICEF, World Vision, Plan, Caritas and all the big name children humanitarian organizations have looked the other way.

End.

How Africa's long serving regimes become Incompetent and illegitimate

STRONGMAN'S RULE

This year marks the 32^nd year since Mr. Museveni ascended to power by force. Other heads of states, such as Eduardos dos Santos, Theorodre Oguang Ngema in Equatorial Guinea, and Mobutu Sseseko of Zaire ruled for well over the 32 years mark. Currently, there are about 10 such Presidents in Sub-Sahara Africa whose longevity in power exceeds a generation of 25 years.

In nearly all these countries, the Presidents also presided over Africa's most impoverished and disparate societies, whose citizens are some of the world’s most suppressed, alienated, disempowered, and divided along parochial lines such as tribalism. For all the years in longevity, these countries produce and export colonial era produces – cash crops, are highly indebted, and fail to provide social services to its citizens. The longer the regime stays in power, the more it becomes incompetent and illegitimate, leading their nations to exploitation and under-development.

The proponents of such regimes, who construct and propagate idealized narratives to justify the dismal performances, are usually the gullible elites and foreign interests.

  

By incompetence, we mean the growing inability of these regimes to uphold the social contract and their dealignment of the mandate to fulfill the development needs of the people. That is, the failure to prioritize and deliver on the needs of its people when it should. By illegitimacy we mean the phony manner in which most of these regimes retain power.

There is an observable inverse function between these variables - the longer a regime stays in power (longevity) in Africa, the more they decay - become incompetent and illegitimate, - with inefficiency as a near natural consequence.

The incompetence starts with the regimes ceding critical policy matters to foreign interests (corporations, foreign powers, and so-called development partners), eventually becoming less accountable to their people, and growing accustomed to privileges resulting from the functions of social and historical structures (including colonial structures) that generate social inequalities.

No one African country that has had a leader for over 25 years was transformed within those years, from a primitive society to industrialized nation. Libya under Muammar Gadhafi became a dependent state, not an industrialized welfare state. Most of these countries are basket cases – as failed or failing states. Further, citizens in these countries become deformed, disempowered, and deprived of citizenship rights. These states tend to collapse with exit of such leaders because they survive by destroying the institutions of the state.

In nearly all these countries, citizens are disempowered that they cannot seek accountability from their government, they civic rights are diminished. Many are now subjects of modern slave trade and human trafficking.

The longevity also makes it possible for foreign interests such as IMF/WB and development partners, such as USAID, EU, DFID, to usurp critical domestic policy areas, shaping social and economic policies, to benefit western and eastern civilization.

There is need for a new generation of African thinkers to challenge this concept of strongman militarized longevity. Africans need to adhere to term limits more so than age limits for effective management of modern African societies and its resources to develop the continent. Several scholars have studied macro-economic policies that exploit Africa and anti-statist influence of neoliberalism - citing the roles of civil society, foundations/Charities (philanthrocapitalism), and African elites in undermining, reducing, and containing the state to a bare minimum.

 However, the strongmen’s regime typology in Africa has become an outstanding menace that subverts social and economic development of Africa. They promote under-development through their nepotistic/sectarian tendencies, for survival; incompetence in enacting pro-people’s social and economic policies; complacency to residual colonial structures of power and foreign interests; repressive to evade accountability; stratifying through a false and opportunistic elites to justify and normalize their incompetence and inefficiency.

In sum, most of the long serving regimes in Africa are not only incompetent but also illegitimate.

End.

Excessive state violence has alienated Ugandans from governance

REPRESSION

The extreme violence where Museveni and his NRM enthusiasts have taken Uganda's politics will alienate many people from meaningful participation in society’s affairs. Already, Ugandans feel helpless – that their votes mean nothing, and their voices, at every level of decision-making is muzzled by violent repression

Uganda is no longer for Ugandans and it is high time the mockery constituted in Art 1 of the overly adulterated 1995 Constitution, that power belongs to the people, got amended to state unequivocally that "power belongs to the State managers who own the guns".

Excessive state violence has alienating citizens from governance. The NRM mindset of violence is constituted horizontally and vertically. This serves to diminish legitimate interests in collective ownership of the State, and dehumanizes agents outside the shades of the repressive state.

The taming of the Police, militarizing, and criminalizing it, serves the symbolic purpose of also militarising the socio-political dimensions of society. This is how power is primarily courted in NRMO and applied to deform society. Ugandan society is now inverted - deformed, instead of being transformed. Uganda is deformed from a peaceful, hopeful and a united nation, into criminal, immoral, unconscionable and violent society.

Public consensus is now by violence, from ridiculous marriage requirements to bar brawls, decisions are coercive and fatal at a slight resistance. People now contend with marrying worthless partners for a fortune under family duress. Everything is overpriced, inflated and that is,on its own, a form of violence on our conscience!

We just lost a young talent, Mowzey Radio – a musician, whose death incidentally bound the nation together in awe of the degree of cruelty, violence, and the propensity to which all of us are culpable to this violence.

When Kanyumunyu  reportedly gunned down that youthful social worker, Akena, the nation was engulfed in a ball-fire of grief and rage. It seems violence at every level is inescapable in this parlance.

Today, many Kanyumunyus lurk on the street, waiting to strike again on the next victim. But, the Kanyumunyus are protected by the state and persons who associate with the violent state. They are at liberty to defend the morally indefensible acts of blatant murder. The big question that remains unanswered to this date is how weapons have permeated civilian realms in an era of terrorism.

Violence in Uganda cannot be divorced from the genesis and corpus of this regime - its formation, survival, and molding of society through decades and counting. Violence as an enterprise definitely is the modus operandi through which NRM has survived for decades.

The Foucaultian governmentality has come to full bearing – policies, constitutionalism, and delivery of social services are all designed on the basis of aggression - repression.

State agency is associated with aggressive and violent acts. Many Ugandans subsisting outside the shade of the state are increasingly being physically deformed as a result of state abuse of power. They are dehydrated, malnourished, sicker, fearful, shorter, and smaller than those protected under the violence of the state. In comparison, those within the nexus of the violent state realms are bulkier, greedy, fierce, armed, egoistical, and crooked.

For the most, social status is borne out of the violence of sectarianism. Ugandans now weigh their life circumstances with each other based on their tribes, not education or enterprises. There are those who work so hard but remain poor, and those that hardly labour but accumulate wealth quickly, or gain promotions faster than they deserve, just on accounts of their tribe. I think the incarcerated former DPC Kirumira eluded to this unfortunate reality. However, the UPDF and government Ministries offer the best case study of sectarianism under this Museveni regime.  

Every Ugandan today is familiar with, or has been violated by sectarianism, whether in private or public sector. Sectarianism is a form of tribal violence wrecked on others by the groups that hold power. It is the reason Baganda will hate Banyankole more than they ever hated northerners, when this regime falls.

End.