|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
As the trade ministry permanent secretary Ssali Busuulwa and MPs like Mawanda Micheal continue to rot in Luzira prison, a fearless official at the ministry of finance and planning has gone ahead to pay 600m to Bukedi cooperative union without any, verification or documentation.
The government of Museveni has since 2011 been paying large sums of money to cooperative unions to compensate them for the buildings, cars, hard cash and whatever else they lost due to the liberation wars of 1979 and the 1980s which brought Museveni to office.
The total money which government is supposed to pay goes up to 500bn to the different cooperative unions allover the country of Uganda. Bukedi is one of those which have been getting free money without anyone in government questioning them for fear of big man Godfrey Ekanya of FDC and a long serving MP for Tororo county.
But the 600m paid to them not very long ago directly from the finance ministry has left the president a very bitter man because of the fact that staunch opposition boy Ekanya has a lot of influence on that cooperative union of Bukedi.
The payment is said to have been scandalous because there was no documentation nor verification report to show what the money was being compensated for and what exactly Bukedi cooperatives union exactly lost to justify such compensation.
In his report of last year, former parliamentary trade committee chairperson Mpaka Mwine had listed Bukedi among the cooperatives unions with a lot of corruption and accountability problems.
This latest 600m has actually created problems and caused members and their leaders in executive to fight over it as they demand for accountability.
This latest scandal of 600m is becoming public at a time when her Baganda tribemates and her leaders in the Masaka Catholic church diocese are grumbling that their own Geraldine Ssali was only a victim of circumstances.
Saying that their daughter is being witch-hunted and persecuted because she has no godfathers in government, recently the Masaka Catholic church officials, whose Bwavu Mpologooma cooperative society received several billions for which Ssali was sent to Luzira, threatened to refund the cash to protect the church’s image.
When she became permanent secretary in July 2021, Ssali prioritized Bwavu Mpologooma’s compensation because her own grandfather had been a key figure in it and she personally knew a lot about the unfair circumstances under which the Society was wound up by the government.
She worked hard to ensure that Bwavu Mpologooma is given priority ahead of Masaka cooperative union which had the support of powerful people from Masaka like Mathias Mpuuga, Haruna Kasolo, Edward Sekandi, former minister of finance Giraido Ssendawula and many others.
One Catholic church priest from Masaka a few days ago was overheard fuming; ‘Why are they mistreating Ssali who is innocent because she simply walked into a ministry which was already a crime scene in as far as that Cooperatives scandal is concerned?”
The disgruntled priest wondered why the investigations covered only Ssali without doing anything on what happened under her predecessors like the late permanent secretary Ambassador Onen and Grace Choda who was the acting permanent secretary before she was posted at the trade ministry.
“We do not know what we did to Museveni as Catholics and people from Masaka Catholic diocese? The Cooperatives payments work began in 2011 and how then do you jump on Ssali who is hardly two years at the ministry? If it’s about tackling corruption and the president is being honest about this, why don’t they show interest in what happened for all those years before Ssali became the permanent secretary?”
The priest ranted while adding that Ssali has never been in touch nor done any deals with all those MPs she is being charged with over alleged connivance over cooperatives cash. This fallout might politically hurt Museveni and his NRM in Masaka area come 2026.
If you have a story in your community or an opinion article, let’s publish it. Send us an email via ultimatenews19@gmail.com
