A Letter to President Museveni.
The other day, I spent 2 hours locked in the worst traffic jam at Njeru (just 4.8kms outside Jinja City).
The reason? Two army trucks had closed off the Jinja road because you the President of Uganda was in the area.
I do not have the expertise to go into the merits of presidential security to reach you Mr President, but can someone in the president’s administration whisper to him that the conduct of blocking roads—including major regional arteries like Jinja road—for hours on end, without prior warning to motorists or alternative routes, is fast turning your trips into a public inconvenience (if not a nuisance!)?
As we wiggled through some of the dusty backroads I caught glimpse of an EU official, visibly rankled by the experience, but helpless in the confusion caused by the your security who did not see the point in explaining the abrupt road closure. I could only imagine what image of our country he would carry with him back home.
Later, a few metres off the main road a South African biker who’s probably a tourist visiting would fall over into a ditch as he tried to avoid an oncoming Kamunye!
Then came ordinary citizens on tens of boda bodas drenched from head to toe in brown dust—a gift from their beloved president?
Strange enough, everyone seemed to endure this Kafkaesque episode in silence. Perhaps acknowledging the great sacrifice they need to make to secure their president from God knows what threat!
It was Mwalimu Nyerere who warned us six decades ago about the dangers of ostentatious displays by his presidential motorcade. In a letter to his ministers in 1963 (when I was a new born baby), he wondered if the president of Tanganyika was fast becoming a public nuisance since motorists would be pushed off the roads whenever he was to leave State House into the city.
Monday on Martyrs Day, you made it to Namugongo to make the case for Nyerere to be Canonized, as you have done many times before. And perhaps you are right. Nyerere deserves Sainthood, for he was no mere mortal like other politicians!.
Yours,
