NRM WOMEN’S LEAGUE LEADER FAULTS MUSEVENI’S 10 POINT PROGRAMME ON SECURITY

Posted On 28 Jun 2018

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In Kampala
Chairperson of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Women’s League, Lydia Wanyoto has expressed pessimism that the 10 point action plan that President Yoweri Museveni pitched last week to address insecurity in the country, is not likely to be effective…at least not in the short run.
Mrs Wanyoto, who has lost two brothers to gunmen, said Museveni plan “only addresses symptoms” of Uganda’s currently security predicament.
Museveni, while addressing parliament last Wednesday announced a list of ten drastic measures, which he believes will help address the rampant cases of murders that recently rocked the nation, especially in the central region.

Among the measures, Museveni proposed motor vehicle tracking, banning of hoodies on motorbikes, eliminating bail and police bond for murder suspects, CCTV cameras in cities and highways and use of drones by security agencies.
But according to Mrs Wanyoto, Uganda’s insecurity is too big and complex a problem for the president’s plan.
“We are dealing with symptoms here,” she said while appearing on a radio talk show during the weekend.
According to Wanyoto, the evidence from the murder scenes of people like former police spokesmen Andrew Felix Kaweesi, and former Arua MP Ibrahim Abiriga clearly point to a high level of anger by the assailants.
This she said is where the president needs to start from, to address the problem.
“We have to go back to the basics and deal with what is causing people to be shot,” she noted.
“I went to the scene of Abiriga’s murder. If you look at the way they were shot, there was a lot of anger. The (assailants) hit their heads, the vehicle as mutilated with like 100 bullets. That’s not just about killing somebody; there is a message that they are trying to send.
“How can we live with people in the community who are so bitter and angry?” she wondered.
“Also where do they get the guns and bullets from? These guys have a high level of expertise. They studied Abiriga and targeted him and they hit the target hard. They didn’t just kill, they sent a statement. You can see a high level of emotion and anger.”
Wanyoto went on to narrate how she too lost two brothers in such shootings, who were not politicians; an indication that no one in Uganda is safe.
One of the brothers, she narrated, was a chemist, and another a health worker, working with TASO.
“These are nationals, who in their private capacities were running their families, and they were shot dead,” She said.
Using her influence as a key government figure, Wanyoto says, she tried to pursue the killers, and even recovered blood samples but because of broken security institutions and without a functioning analytical lab, the cases were closed.
“My home is just 2 kilometres from the Mbale High Court. At the court our case has closed but in our family that case cannot close. My brothers’ children and their wives are demanding. How can a case close when they have graves in their home?”
Wanyoto noted that President Museveni’s grand plan, while plausible, can only work in the long run.
“The points that the president raised are important but they have to be segmented in terms of the current, the intermediate and the future. What he raised is for the future but we need to deal with the now.”
The NRM Women’s leader suggested that government start by taking advantage of the oncoming village level elections, to strength security from the ground.
“It’s good that we are going to have elections; but if I had powers, we wouldn’t do these elections through voting. We would have village appointments of strong people that don’t need to be populist to manage the villages. It is important that we get the basics of village security, and we build from there,” she said.