When Prosperity for all died a quiet and miserable death, the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADs) took over the mandate of providing inputs, finding markets and extension services to farmers.
The initiative was plagued by corruption including sub-contracting of dishonest & corrupt individuals to provide seedlings and other inputs. The contracts to supply seedlings and other inputs ended up in the hands of connected individuals in government a.k.a #Gamba Nogu type# and NAADS paid inflated prices for low quality inputs especially seedlings and hiefers, self awarding of contracts, At one point public officers employed by NAADs would purchase local breeds from Ugandans and pass them off as exotic breeds thereby charging government the price of exotic breeds yet the supplied product was a local breed. After years of grand corruption at NAADS, President M7 a.k.a Tibihaburwa decided that the army would manage the process after concluding that civilians were irretrievably corrupt.
The Army took over the Monitoring and supervision of agricultural inputs with the aim of improving the livelihoods of Ugandans through promoting agriculture. However, The Army were failed by NAADS Secretariat technical team in anyway Civilians now thought it was the Army failing them, yet it was/still NAADS in charge of Procurement of those fake inputs and plantings. Soon it looked like the soldiers were as corrupt and inefficient as the civilians of NAADS in the eyes of the wanainchi. Members of the public continued to complain of poor quality inputs, favoritism and corruption in the distribution of the inputs and delay in the distribution of seedlings.
NAADS Secretariat still carries a big Budget while the biggest percentage goes to the workshops, conferences and meetings as the wanainchi /Peasants continue to suffer the same problem of poor service delivery, hence failing it’s principle MISSION of transforming Uganda through commercial Agriculture and value addition.
Up to today, 68% of our farmers are still under subsistence farming , meaning A no change caused by NAADS Secretariat technical team.
To me I think many of the government projects fail because of poor planning by technocrats(Lack of project visibility) and Unless Government plans welldon’t except any miracle from the so called Parish development Model.
For God and My Country.
Ngabirano Medard Bukambiza concerned Citizen.
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