A few days ago, the President of Uganda ordered for closure and investigation of Democratic Governance Facility- DGF. This has since then created a debate in the main stream media and on social media as to why the President decided to close DGF which was employing hundreds of Ugandans and injecting Shs500 billion to the national economy.
The NRM Government having established the media and made informing Ugandans a priority, so many people with ill intentions use the media as their walking stick. Even when they’re wrong, they will run to the media to poison the minds of the audience and pin those who are putting them to oder. Our Government has however not been so good in taking part in the debates created and hosted by different media houses hence making the media a chimney for the black smoke against the government most times.
Those who try to stand in for the government are fought and named all sorts of things so that they don’t act as channel of the right information to the citizens of Uganda. This has affected us and costed as Government not because we are bad or dictatorial Government as they usually put it but because we have not found out the importance of the media so that we use it to reach out to citizens in time.
The people who are blaming the government for the closure of DGF are not telling Ugandans why the President made the decision of closing them. They only want to create an impression that the President is fighting them to take their jobs and also fight democracy which they have been lecturing us about for many years. What Ugandans should know is that the sovereignty of our great country should be respected, protected and preserved by all citizens and foreigners living in Uganda because Uganda is a republic. Whoever does anything that comprises the national security is held accountable and no negotiations about that. The President as head of state and commander in chief receives intelligence information and therefore when he makes a decision it is based on an informed point of view and with convincing evidence. Those who have been saying that the people who are feeding information to the president are misleading him are wrong because Ugandan intelligence officers are educated trained and are professionals in what they do.
Surprisingly and most interesting is that most countries Which have been funding DGF hold their national security so dear. Actually for them, they don’t even consult or negotiate with anybody for as long as anything whether business in nature or humanitarian puts their their national security at risk, they close it down and blacklist it. I have read news on international sites about the social media sites that have been closed and blacklisted in most of those countries. I’m sure just like DGF those platforms which are closed always have one or two benefits to the citizens but they’re closed to preserve the sovereignty of their countries. How comes when it reaches to Uganda and africa it turns wrong and dictatorial when the President makes a decision that is meant to preserve and protect the sovereignty of our country which he actually swore to do? That’s the Question that Ugandans should ask themselves so that it helps them discover the selfishness of some people when it comes to themselves.
This is not new however because even during colonial times they considered themselves masters of Africans and it seems that entitlement has grown up to date.
The DGF, its sympathizers and beneficiaries should re-correct themselves and stop the dirty actions of sponsoring insecurity in Uganda, seek pardon from the head of state and all Ugandans and they will be given a green light to restart their lectures of the sham democracy they been hugely funding that has unfortunately left most of the African countries in tatters. If they insist on acting godly and righteous as they pin our President in the eyes of the citizens who actually elected him, they won’t have things easy. What we are in, should be like a marriage where the wife and husband should respect each other for peace to prevail, also of the two parties one must submit to the other. Failure to do that wrangles and Quarrels will become the order of the day. Ugandans and the foreigners living here must know that Uganda is a sovereign state with a functioning government in place.
The writer is a deputy RDC Kitagwenda District.
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