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OPINION | By a Citizen of Uganda
By Alexander Luyima | Hoima Post
To some, this may look like progress. To millions of us who have lived through four decades of this rule, it is not a vision, it is a taunt. It is a reminder of the painful gap between political rhetoric and the lived reality of Ugandans.
We are told these gains are “ours.” But from where we stand, the arithmetic does not add up. Your gain is not my pain, and to suggest otherwise insults both our intelligence and our suffering.
The Theft of a Promise
When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) captured power in 1986, it carried the banner of hope,promising democracy, accountability, and an end to state predation. But nearly forty years later, that promise has been hijacked. What was meant to be liberation has hardened into one of Africa’s most entrenched personal fiefdoms.
The so-called gains are visible only to a select few:
They are counted in sprawling estates and luxury cars parading down Kampala’s potholed roads.
They are written in Auditor General reports that read like crime novels, billions lost to “ghost soldiers,” stolen maternal health funds, and roads that exist only on paper.
Meanwhile, our reality is starkly different:
A mother watching her child die because the local health center has no medicine.
A graduate staring into an empty future of joblessness and nepotism.
A farmer losing his ancestral land to a connected “investor” with no court to hear his cry.
A Legacy of Systemic Failure
To speak of a “qualitative leap” when the very foundations of society are crumbling is nothing short of cruel.
An Economy of Extraction: Uganda’s economy is engineered not for prosperity, but for looting. Citizens are reduced to a rent source for a parasitic elite. Small businesses are strangled by corruption and unfair competition from politically connected firms.
The Death of Democracy: Elections are not choices they are rituals of endorsement, enforced with violence, voter bribery, and suppression of dissent. Parliament is no longer a house of the people but a chamber of cadres. The judiciary, once a beacon of justice, has been stripped of its independence.
The Youth Time Bomb: Over 70% of Uganda’s population is under 30. Far from beneficiaries of any “gain,” they are its victims educated but unemployed, connected yet silenced. Their frustration is a ticking time bomb that no propaganda campaign can defuse.
Expert Voices: A Consensus of Condemnation
The global community, usually cautious in its criticism, has been brutally clear:
A senior World Bank economist (speaking anonymously) said:
“Uganda’s economic model is fundamentally unsustainable. The much-touted growth numbers are misleading macro aggregates that hide crippling inequality and systemic corruption. This structure blocks the very middle-income transition it claims to be achieving.”
A Nairobi-based African political analyst went further:
“‘Protecting the gains’ is nothing more than protecting a patronage cartel. Uganda’s institutions have been captured. What you see is not governance, it is organized theft dressed up as policy.”
The Pain is Real. The Resistance is Growing.
We have heard these slogans before—1986, 1996, 2006, 2016, 2026. Each time, the words change but the pain deepens. The language of “protection” betrays a truth: the regime knows it sits atop a volcano of discontent, and its only strategy is to tighten the lid.
But pain has limits. It is carried in hushed taxi conversations, in bold protest art, and in the quiet resolve of parents dreaming of a freer Uganda for their children.
The true “qualitative leap” our country needs will not be delivered by those who have stolen from us for forty years. It will come only from a fundamental reset, a return to the original promise: a government that serves its people, not one that feeds on them.
The gains we seek are not theirs to protect. They are ours to reclaim.
💬 Do you agree Uganda’s “gains” belong to the people, not the few? What has been your own lived experience of these forty years? Share your voice below because silence only protects the status quo.
