Inside the Room Where Amama Mbabazi’s Wife Must Have Realized That Museveni Has Given her ‘Byoya bya Nswa’

On Wednesday, Gen Henry Tumukunde led all the newly appointed Ministers of State under his docket to the gender ministry board room. These included Mary Kutesa Kamuli (Culture), Mercy Faith Lakisa (Youths & Children), Simon Mulongo (Employment & Industrial Relations), Joyce Acan Okeny (PWDs) and Jacqueline Mbabazi who replaced Dominic Gidudu for the Elderly Persons docket.

Tumukunde replaced Betty Among, Kutesa replaced Peace Mutuzo, Lakisa replaced Balaam Barugahara and Mulongo replaced Davinia Anyakun. Wednesday afternoon was the handover event.

Gidudu used the occasion to signal Mrs. Mbabazi not to expect much because what she had been given is a poorly facilitated docket with barely any money to do any work or implement any projects capable of qualitatively impacting lives of ordinary elderly persons who she also represents as MP in Parliament.

He said there was no budget clearly allocated to the department of elderly persons implying there is no way she can do any work yet Mrs. Mbabazi’s electors and constituents believe that, by unleashing her on them, Gen Museveni had exposed her to big money-making opportunities.

Because of such perception, Gidudu implied that Mrs. Mbabazi must prepare and expect to frequently be visited by individuals and large delegations of older persons who will come expecting her to help their children get jobs, their companies land lucrative public procurement deals in government, lunch and transport refund-and sometime money to facilitate their hotel accommodation in Kampala before going back to the village.

He advised her to be prepared to part with personal money each time such things happen because there is nowhere PS Aggrey Kibenge will get such money from to facilitate Ministers to interact with thousands of such guests who believe you are their servant and they are entitled to receiving endless material help from you. Gidudu corroborated on what Mutuzo had said earlier on namely that not being able to materially help such frequent guests, will expose the new Ministers to being demonized, attacked and ridiculed on social media.

This will culminate into endless pressure and thereby making it hard for the new leaders to do their work and enjoy the offices they have been deployed to.

Balaam had in an earlier speech told exactly the same thing to Lakisa as Gen Tumukunde and Amongi pensively looked on. Balaam told her the young people and mothers with abandoned vulnerable children are very many and will keep flooding Gender House every Tuesday because they believe this is their Minister and they are entitled to obtaining material help from her.

“There is no budget for the Ministry you are coming to inherit at all,” Balaam said as a clearly appalled Lakisa uneasily turned in her seat. He explained how he has been pretending to help by making phone calls and writing letters to concerned government officials elsewhere, not within Gender. Sometimes, he has had to involve the media to publicly rebuke the perpetrators and to also publicize the plight of some of such vulnerable people coming to seek help from his office.

Hellen Grace Asamo for the PWDs didn’t have any better story to tell to her successor Joyce Acan Okeny as she handed over to her. Instead she advised the new Ministers to be innovative and prepare to even tell lies sometimes like she one time did in Parliament, with the acquiescence of the former Speaker Anita Among, as MPs bayed for her blood while demanding for answers. She seemed to be more grateful of the good leader Betty Amongi had been unlike her other fellow state ministers who seemed to have reservations on that issue, especially Davinia Anyakun.

Davinia Anyakun, who clearly seemed happy to be finally ending her tour of duty at Gender, where she didn’t have a very good relationship with her senior Minister, corroborated all the stuff her colleagues had said and called on Gen Henry Tumukunde the new senior Minister at Gender to prepare himself with having to deal with a much more complicated situation at Gender than he might be anticipating.

It’s a good and very important Ministry except that it’s one of Uganda’s most underfunded, notwithstanding the fact that its home to NSSF over which the Gender Minister has supervisory authority. Every outgoing Minister enumerated lists of challenges while encouraging their incoming successors to come in emotionally well prepared as they devise ways to keep thriving in such a deprived environment.

All the above notwithstanding, Gidudu praised the GoU for the SAGE-related progress whereby every older person aged 65 years and more will be earning a grant of Shs35,000 per month, up from the mere Shs25,000 it has always been. The recipient age was not very long ago lowered from 80 years, which Gidudu celebrated as an achievement but which at the same time means that Mrs. Mbabazi will be having 1.4m older persons to look after under the SAGE arrangement, up from the mere 320,000 who had been eligible under her predecessor’s days.

The outgoing Ministers also spoke about staffing gap challenges which continue slowing down work at the Gender Ministry. Having gotten used to glamorous life in the fast lane for the many years her husband was Museveni’s co-President defacto, Mrs. Mbabazi (who famously opposed the status quo during the 2016 elections cycle) must have felt dispirited as the exiting Ministers lamented about the financially-deprived situation at the Gender Ministry.

Yet you can’t entirely blame Gen Museveni for initially deploying her to such a Ministry because the truth is that the belligerent politics of 2016 must have made him learn the hard way and he now has reason to be cautious when dealing with such hard-to-predict cadres inside the Movement.

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