Containing corruption; Who is responsible?

Uganda is and remains among the most corrupt nations in the world.According to the recent Global Corruption Barometer released by Transparency International, among the 95 countries surveyed, Uganda is listed among the 17 most corrupt countries in the World. This recent rankings continues to darken Uganda’s economic outlook thus “choking ’’ development and all actions towards anti-corruption that seems to produce a mountain of words and hardly a molehill of solid and sustained results of positive reforms.

Corruption has continued to distort resource allocation and government performance and this is worsened by its actions to retain and protect the culprits. WhilePresident Museveni continues to Condemn the corrupt and swears to have zero tolerance to corruption in his National Resistance Movement (NRM)Government, he is at the same time still seemingly trusting and deploying the most corrupt and usual suspects of crime to take responsibility of critical national affairs. So who should we hold as accountable to explain for example to the people of Northern Uganda whose “billions of shillings ’’money meant for their rehabilitation that went to the pockets of “some officials” unexplained to them? Such actions are unfair to the progress of the country and further drag behind the progress of development activities fostered towards achieving national development goals such as the Vision 2040.

In my opinion, Uganda’s corruption challenges seem to be getting worse as time goes by and the biggest setback is the lack of political will to fight the problem. Corruption has gone beyond the individuals and has now turned out to be an institutionalized issue thus affecting their functionality. This set back further leaves a lot to be desired as it usually compromises the critical issues such as good governance, accountability, transparency. So whose responsibility is it to contain corruption? Who should further impart civic competence which is lacking in this country and is seemingly making the situation worse day by day? Many Ugandans view the donations and offerings by state actors as favors and do not see this as rights holders, that it is their entitlement and must demand for such services from the duty bearers for whom the obligation lies to fulfill and meet these needs.

Precisely, we should share the responsibility of containing corruption because we are participants to this social problem willingly or unwillingly; we realize that each corrupt transaction requires a ‘buyer’ and a “seller’.However, I would like to applause the Civil Society Organizations on board that are demanding for reforms because an active, involved and empowered citizenry is vital to any anti-corruption campaign.However, the CSOs and other Civil Activists can achieve real gains and benefits if the citizenry revives its understanding as well as develop clear expectations to understand that it is entitled to a government that is corrupt free. This further goes to the view that the CSOs should re consider the Rights Based Approach to Development programming as this will promote social transformation by empowering people to exercise their voice to influence the process of change. This approach further adds substance to the universal principles of human rights by translating them into entitlements and concrete actions. It can further be extended to impart civic competence among the citizenry in containing corruption which seem to be “A necessary Evil in our Society”because corruption adversely affects efforts to reduce poverty, promote human rights and ensure gender equality.

The responsibility of containing corruption must not ignore the participation of international donor community, it should also focus at strengthening state capacity to address corruption and improve accountability and transparency of the state institutions. The Government should give priority and encourage healthy relationship and partnership in Civil Society, Media and the private sector and should support them as they play their watch dog role while offering relevant information to the citizenry.

ANENA CINDERELLA