By John Kabagambe
KAMPALA-UGANDA/NEWSDAY:The Brig Isoke- led State House Anti-corruption Unit (SH-ACU) has clearly taken the mantle of fighting corruption with zeal and gusto by keeping the momentum, dedication and pace set by its founding leader Col Edith Nakalema.
Within a few months, SH-ACU has netted scores of district level officials in a crack down that has left many of the culprits not only arrested, but charged, arraigned in court and remanded in prison. Examples abound such as; Entebbe municipality officials namely Nabirye Monica, (who is the principal education officer) and *Ssekagiri Frank* (the municipality community development officer) who misappropriated Shs.900m meant for youth livelihood/women development program.
Still on a government monitoring exercise, SH-ACU Lira District land board secretary, a one Okello Francis was netted in a corruption swoop for hiding several original land titles including titles for the Mayor’s garden which was dubiously illegally given away. Its noteworthy and indicative of the extent of the rot at the Lira district land board office, that on the night of his arrest, the secretary district land board was found carrying away from office, thousands of official documents and titles in his private car.
Elsewhere, 2 Kira municipality Engineers namely James Joloba and Division Engineer Shamie Katongole were nabbed over shoddy and substandard work on 2 roads (Kira-Kiwologoma/pine Shimoni) worth Shs.1.82bn as well as misusing Shs. 85bn while the chairman Bunamwaya market vendors SACCO, a one Tibakanya Lazarus is facing criminal prosecution for gross mismanagement of Emyoga funds.
We thus commend and applaud the efforts of SH-ACU and the sister agencies that work hand in glove with it, to confront corruption head on, and prevent the irredeemable haemorrhage of public funds. It’s only through such relentless and concerted efforts that we can all have improved service delivery as well as hope to achieve our country’s development goals.
John Kabagambe is a Lawyer and a Writer.
Twitter@JohnKabagambe4