Nigeria Content Online

Corruption
in Uganda will swallow billions of dollars in revenue from the East
African nation’s budding oil industry that is needed to build schools,
hospitals and roads, says a Ugandan opposition leader. Olara Otunnu, a
former U.N. under secretary-general who heads the Uganda Peoples
Congress party, said there had been no transparency on plans to develop
the oil found in 2006 along Uganda’s border with the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
Otunnu, Uganda’s
foreign minister from 1985-86, hopes to topple longtime President
Yoweri Museveni when the country goes to the polls in February ahead of
the start of commercial oil production late next year. British firms
Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil have found up to 2 billion barrels of oil
in the Albertine Rift Basin and experts say the reserves could be four
times bigger. Uganda stands to earn about $2 billion a year in oil
revenue. “Based on the current record all that money would be
swindled,” Otunnu told Reuters in an interview in New York. “All this
is being handled personally and exclusively at the kitchen table of the
president. We know nothing about it.” “We don’t need to wait until oil
begins to flow. We already know … the oil revenue will become part of
his personal ATM machine,” said Otunnu, who could be arrested when he
returns to Uganda for failing to appear in court this week on sedition
charges related to radio show comments made earlier this year. He says
the charges are a bid by Museveni to silence him. Ugandan Minister for
Information Kabakumba Matsiko said it was widely accepted that East
Africa’s third largest economy has been blighted by corruption, but the
government has systems and institutions in place to combat it.
Oil money for infrastructure
“Otunnu is entitled
to his opinion. Unfortunately he’s blinded by his own hatred,” Matsiko
said. “This oil has always been there, but no previous government
including the one in which Otunnu served ever thought about starting
exploration. The president has stated on several occasions that the oil
money will not be used for recurrent expenditure but long-term
infrastructure development in the health, transport and other sectors.”
Museveni won power
in 1986 and was credited with returning stability and economic vitality
to Uganda, ravaged by dictatorship and civil wars in the 1970s and
early 1980s. The country’s economy is seen growing between 7-8 percent
in 2010/11 from 5.6 percent in 2009/10.
But donors and
global civil society groups accuse Museveni of suppressing opposition
and free speech, tightening his grip on power and failing to rein in
rampant corruption. International donors said this week that they would
trim at least 10 percent off their $360 million contribution to
Uganda’s budget in the year to June 2011 because of concerns over
corruption.
Opposition parties have refused to work with the electoral
commission, because they say it is corrupt, but Otunnu said that does
not mean there will be a boycott of the election. He also said
negotiations continue among leading opposition parties to form an
Inter-Party Cooperation coalition to field a single candidate against
Museveni. “Everything is turned into this corrupt enterprise,” said
Otunnu. “We must make sure … that there is change, there’s
accountability, there’s transparency … that this oil will be a
blessing for the people of Uganda.”