Has NAADS become a farce?

Seemingly successful farmers have frequently turned out to be frauds or not even on the NAADS programme

By Dalton Wanyera 

Posted Sunday, September 5 2010 at 00:00

Just before the debacle of the National Resistance Movement’s August 31 primaries, there had been strident criticism of the President’s ten-day tour of Busoga, ostensibly to evaluate the performance of the much-maligned National Agricultural Advisory Services programme.

Ssalamu Musumba, FDC’s vice president (eastern) criticised the tour as a clever political move to bribe voters ahead of the 2011 elections.
“It is a shame, Museveni just wants to use the cover of NAADS to bribe voters with those brown envelops he is giving out. NAADS itself is a failed project,” she said while on a radio talk show at Bamboo FM.
But the government chief whip, Daudi Migereko and Member of Parliament for Butembe County in Jinja, has a differing view.

“This tour is very significant. It has boosted the morale of our people by the fact that the President has shown interest in what they do. It means he wants to see wealth trickle down to the people since he is giving his testimony of how he got rich through modern agriculture. It is an assurance that they too can prosper,” he said.

But the tour was not just limited to NAADS. The President told those who listened that their demand for electricity, water and roads was ambitious and irrelevant.

“I am here to talk about household incomes, how do we improve our lifestyles? I don’t understand when a barefooted man comes shouting that he wants a tarmac road. You demand for electricity yet you don’t have enough to eat, electricity will not be given to you freely,” he said at several stopovers he made.

Such statements did not stop the locals from staging ‘roadblocks’ at which they demanded to hear from Mr Museveni. This was one side of the story though: it could have been interpreted as a President talking from both sides of his mouth and the people making a political statement.

The other less dramatised story may yet bear more significance. It is the story of how model farmers to be visited by the President were selected. Emerging information now seems to suggest that they duped the President – and he went along with the lie just as he has done in other parts of the country.

This how it reportedly worked: NAADS officials in the company of ruling party functionaries would approach a well-established farmer in the region who they would convince to host the President on the claim that they had benefited from the programme. In return, the said farmer was promised fifty percent of what ‘token of appreciation’ Mr Museveni would hand out.
It is possibly with this knowledge ringing at the back of her mind that Deputy Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga clashed with Ms Susan Lubogo, a State House employee.

“How can you select all the three farmers in the same sub-county, more over the two are just 200 metres apart?” Ms Kadaga asked rhetorically in Namayingo District. “This programme is to benefit farmers across the board not for you … This betrayal cannot be accepted,” she said
Ms LubogoThe latter’s team had selected the three farmers in Bulinji Sub-county Bukoli South constituency.

In other instances, knowledgeable individuals say the farmer was coached on what to say about NAADS; how s/he has benefited and challenges faced to give the impression that they were familiar with programme.

This is why, at one of the visits to the farm of one Dasiru Mugoya, it was not shocking to hear a female MP from Iganga say: “This cow has just been brought. It is not a week old here but what can we do if things are not going the right way. We had to get something to show the President.”
There was not a single blade of grass in its feeding trough, no cow dung to show that this was its home. The structure had a wet floor where it appeared concrete had been hurriedly mixed.

“NAADS is what has brought us problems. Some people have never got items promised to them and they are frustrated. You find that money comes late or doesn’t come at all. If it does, it ends up in wrong hands,” the MP continued.

Another example of the deception came to light at the farm of Mr James Patrick Bungu. Mr Bungu currently owns 101 dairy cows having started animal husbandry with one local breed cow in 1976. He earns Shs50 million plus in a year from 230 litres of milk he sells everyday at Shs600 a unit.

“I have never received anything from NAADS; instead I supply them with my calves, [goat] kids and poultry. They are of a better breed,” Mr Bungu unwittingly let the cat out of the bag as the President nodded.

“Oh you are rich; there is wealth in Nawanyango (Mr Bungu’s village in Kiyunga District),” Mr Museveni said and promptly announced that he had donated a pick-up truck to Mr Bungu as a token of appreciation plus Shs10 million to the farmers group he heads.

Mr Bungu, like Charles Kiwanuka of Buseyi village in Busesa parish, Iganga, are rich farmers who have gotten there without NAADS. But the President was made to think the project he is so passionate about is producing results. Mr Kiwanuka also earned a pick-up truck.

In contradiction of himself, on this tour, the President rewarded big farmers with Shs10 million along with pick-ups while giving the humble and struggling peasants only Shs5 million. Yet the President had earlier promised to deal with NAADS officials who misdirect programme supplies.
“I have received reports that they (NAADS officials) give to only those who have and to their relatives. I will deal with them,” he said to some cheering. But here he was doing exactly the same thing.

Mr Zakaria Kwezila, Mr Kiwanuka, Mr Bungu, Mr Hamudan Nadhubu of Bukazito village in Nabukalu Sub-county, Bugiri District who lives in a Shs22 million house are all people of means.

But why the lies? One view is that politicians wanted to impress the President that they had worked for the success of this programme, which was supposed to be Mr Museveni’s delivery on a 2006 election promise to stamp out household poverty across the country.

The charade extended itself to the theatre of the political absurd with 102 purported defectors from the Uganda Peoples Congress opposition party being paraded before Mr Museveni in Bugiri.

The fellows bravely claimed to have been holding leadership positions in the UPC. What they may have forgotten to tell the President is that in 2006 UPC registered less than 50 votes from that area. So what were they all about?

But just possibly, the people may not have been fooled. In Bugabula South where the Minister of State for Lands, Asumani Kiyingi, is the MP residents waved placards reading: ‘No electricity, no fourth term’ and ‘NAADS is for the rich.’

“NAADS and the way it was handled have exposed a very nasty streak in our society,” says Dr Frank Nabwiso, a former MP and member of the Forum for Democratic Change.

But the director NAADS Secretariat, Dr Silim Nahdy is very optimistic. He says: “The second phase has been allocated more funds, though details are not yet confirmed by both the government and development partners. It is proposed to be over Shs160 billion per annum.”

For a programme that was supposed to penetrate the remotest parts of the country, its impact on rural household communities (in terms of enhancing food security and improving incomes) remains uncertain as Mr Museveni will have probably realised from the feedback he received from the people.
It seems that the strategy of employing model farmers to spur change has been undermined by corruption.

As Dr Nahdy observed, the challenges in farmer empowerment, service provision and procurement must be addressed in Phase II if only to avoid a repeat of the pretense which unfolded on the Busoga presidential jaunt and in other places before it.

                                             BRAVE: A young man stays firm after circumcision.

For decades now, a tribe in Eastern part of Uganda, circumcise their male children who are perceived to have matured and ought to be inaugurated into manhood.
Several people have criticized the act either out of bias, misinformed or sheer fear: Many of them say the method is an easy way contracting HIV/Aids but non has proved it so.
Before the inception of HIV,the world, including people of Bugisu had lived with Syphilis, gonorrhea, not at one time was there any link of the ailments to the circumcision method. This by the fact that that knife never touches blood unless other wise. Even then it can not be used while cloaked in blood onto another candidate.
It is an irony when people say the same practice looked at as risky but campaign of how it can reduce the risk of the same risk it pauses by 60%.

By DALTON WANYERA

Posted Thursday, July 1 2010 at 00:00
There is no clear sign post to indicate the presence of a hospital along this pothole-filled-road, deep down in Mayuge District, Maniro Sub County, Nkombe village.
The only one existent is obscured by a bush bearing the words “family planning services available here”. I later learn that this health facility has been around since 1996; one structure occupied by one table and a chair for the hospital in-charge. The nurses improvise; the patients find the floor convenient, after all, chairs are rare even in their homes. All the rooms are empty except one with a two inch mattress in a corner. Besides it is a sunflower flask, food container and plastic plates and a cup.
On the mattress lies a woman who has just made it into motherhood. Mariam Katono, 18, arrived here the previous night. She had traveled three miles in company of Bilali Kakaire, her husband. “I began feeling labour pains soon after the 7 o’clock news. I tried to push from home but I failed. My husband then put me on the bicycle up to here,” she says. “It’s a baby boy. He is my first born, the nurses were good to me and I did not get any complications.”
Sarah Mirembe Nabakawa, the only midwife has been serving at the facility for one and a half years now. Despite the common stories of ignoring patients due to lack of gloves, syringes and other basics, Katono was lucky. There was enough stock of these.
“The askari came to my house at 10p.m. I had to come and see the patient since I’m the only one. She had a normal delivery perhaps because she used to come for ante-natal services,” Nabakawa said.
The medical personnel say the patients either share the mattress or use it in turns. We at times ask them to vacate the bed for only the new babies. “She was lucky, the time she came in some patients had just been discharged. She has had the mattress to herself alone; throughout the night up to now. It is the only mattress we have so they share it. I work on a minimum of six mothers daily.”
Ms Nabakawa says, “Professionally, a patient is supposed to receive an injection while lying down. But here, we ask them to touch the wall while standing. It is very risky especially with children.”
The district nursing officer, Maria Najjemba seems, however, determined to uphold the oath of her profession, “save life at all costs”. “There are two delivery beds in Magada Health Centre. We should give one to Nkombe,” she said. “The problems with women here (Mayuge) is that they don’t want to go to hospitals. They keep telling medical officers that unless a ‘sacrifice’ is made in the hospital, they cannot go there. They fear to die immediately they are admitted.”
The district health officer, Mayuge, Dr Charles Nabangi, says out of the 41 health centres in the district, Nkombe Health Centre II is so far well staffed with seven people ( a nursing officer, a mid wife, two nursing assistants, an askari and two porters).
Mayuge District is one of the highly impoverished districts in the country. The district which harbours a 40,000 population has only a two per cent supply of water and electricity. The fertility rate is evidently high. The poor road network just worsens the patients’ plight given that the few active health centres are an average of 7.5 miles apart.
“We have a bicycle which serves as a community ambulance. It is an ordinary bicycle modified into a three-wheel to accommodate a patient and enable them travel while lying down,” Buziba said. Tales are told of how women deliver along the road.
The Minister of State for Agriculture, Aggrey Baggile, also the area Member of Parliament launched the maternity ward built by the Busoga Forestry Company. The company managing director, Isaac Kapalaga said: “People are not just committed to changing lives. All the needs of these facilities are basic. We pledge to provide solar panel, delivery bed to add on the maternity ward, mattresses and the beds.”
Even if the company promised a solar panel and a delivery bed, patients will still have to buy their own fuel for lighting and mothers due will have to endure the cold on the floor before these items arrive later in the year.

Book Review

Title: Purple Hibiscus
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Reviewed by: Dalton Wanyera
PURPLE HIBISCUS is a vivid, beautifully written novel about a 15-year-old-Kambili growing up in a stifling Catholic household in Nigeria.
It is difficult to describe the oppression that haunts every page of the brilliantly knitted novel. It could be the oppressive heat described so well by the 25-old-author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, brought about by the harsh African harmattan winds. Yet it could also be the force of an unquestioned faith in religion. But in Purple Hibiscus, the worst kind of oppression is the stifling power of abuse; verbal, mental and physical abuse wrought by Kambili’s father, “Papa".
Papa is an interesting character, a person completely immersed into the superiority of the Western manner of thought and action, especially through religion; nothing will stop him to see it (Catholicism) observed by the letter in his house. He is at once consumed by overt extremes of passion—extreme love and, worse, extreme anger. His family, including the protagonist, Kambili (through whom the story is told), live every minute of their life in sheer terror, always looking upon Papa for approval. Adichie’s descriptions of Papa’s stifling presence are extremely well done. The reader’s heart bleeds for the family.
During one particularly telling episode, Kambili has stood second in her class at school and the sheer terror in her voice is scary — one waits with bated breath for the nasty consequences that are sure to follow:
“The Reverend Sisters gave us our cards unsealed. I came second in my class. It was written in figures: “2/25.” My form mistress, Sister Clara, had written, “Kambili is intelligent beyond her years, quiet and responsible.” The principal, Mother Lucy, wrote, “A brilliant, obedient student and a daughter to be proud of.” But I knew Papa would not be proud. He had often told Jaja and me that he did not spend so much money on Daughters of the Immaculate Heart and St. Nicholas to have us let other children come first…I wanted to make Papa proud, to do as well as he had done. I needed him to touch the back of my neck and tell me I was fulfilling God’s purpose. I needed him to hug me close and say that to whom much is given, much is also expected. I needed him to smile at me, in that way that lit up his face, which warmed something inside me. But I had come second. I was stained by failure.”
Eventually Kambili and her brother Jaja get a taste of freedom when their aunt Ifeoma takes them away for a little vacation to her country home. Yet even here, while the two are free from their father’s physical presence, they can understandably never shake off their father’s shadow. Every time the phone rings, Kambili quakes in fear.
All around then, Nigeria is slowly disintegrating just as the family slowly does (the breaking of the Figurines symbolizes this). A violent coup causes Aunt Ifeoma to leave the country for America. Adichie makes some political statements here, “these are the people [Westerners in general] who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times that we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once?”
The novel is a sharp retrospection of the turbulent political times in the recent past of Nigeria. Yet go farther to question the sincerity of politicians; is it the military governments or civilian that are more corrupt. These political statements might be lost on the reader only because Kambili’s own personal tragedy seems so much more urgent and dangerous.
Kambili and Jaja along with their long-suffering mother eventually liberate themselves from the tyranny of their father. It is a questionable freedom, though. Like any survivor of abuse, Kambili finds that release without closure is small success. “Silence hangs over us [now],” she says toward the end of Purple Hibiscus. It's only when Kambili is pulled out of this horrific environment that she is able to see how wrong it is and understand that this mode is not normal.
Even though the emotional and physical pains he inflicted are seen only as a gesture of love for her own good, but later she comes to consider his actions as abnormal. Aunty Ifeoma and their cousins have brought joy and laughter to Kambili and Jaja, and that cannot be taken away.
The book prompts a re-examination of cross-sectional audience; politicians, religious and ordinary people on how life and ideology could be upheld with out necessarily suppressing those under their tutelage.
The plot’s tempo is proportionally measured against Nigeria’s fast moving urban life.
It is a harsh story, almost unbearable at first, but beautifully written. The book has earned Chimamanda a comfortable position on the list of Africa’s best writers.

Tragedy befalls Masaba-land

 

The people of Nametsi in Bududa districts, disparately search for the remains of the mudslide victims.

Death is not unusual rather the way we die or what kills us is some times very unusual.

Like a normal day, the people of Nametsi went to bed just like another raainny day in their lives.     

Gay or not gay we are all sexually immoral!

The year 2009,ended with very heated debate in Uganda's parliament sitting in Kampala. The question of whether to pass a bill into a law that punishes gay ism with death or at least life imprisonment was the pivotal point.
Moved by the Ndorew west MP David Bahati, it inflammed the whole country and attracted scary statements from uganda's donors.
Basically the bill derives meaning from culture, tradition and church values, politicians in the country saw the coming of the bill as belated.
Yet the human rights activists came out strongly to oppose the credibility of the law saying it infringed on people's right to chose sexual enjoyment. One though wonders why people who detest infringement of their right come masked to public and under pseudo names.I believe no single reason advanced by the gays and their advocates apart from the law "segregating" them.
Here then is my point; all people who engage, will or rather engaged in the act of sex have at one time been immoral just like those who commit homosexuality and lesbianism.
The immorality associated with sex include fornication, rape, adultery, cohabiting, oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, bestiality and some time no sex at all.
These just like homosexuality should be punished equally, this bill should cater for all these vices in sexual life.
As much as people have the rights these rights should not affect others directly or other wise. I mean they (homosexuals) go around recruiting people's children even those who are minors.
As a young man who has a son in whom i see a bright future, i would cling on some one's throat found talking my son into homosexuality!