From Presidential Press Unit (PPU) – 9th April, 2024
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni urged the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) officers to believe in the Patriotism of Uganda because the principle is very crucial in the prosperity of citizens.
“The authority we are establishing over the country must recognise patriotism. It must be guided by principle, every policeman, soldier and civil servant must believe in the patriotism of Uganda; loving Uganda, why? Because you need it,” he stressed.
The President made the remarks today at State House-Entebbe while delivering a lecture of opportunity to CID officers who have been undergoing a refresher course at Kabalye Police Training School.
President Museveni explained to the officers that during their student movement days in the 1960s, they set up their historical mission which was later adopted when they came to government and this mission involved among others, how they can make Ugandans prosperous.
“So, if you are a service provider or if you come to provide leadership, why don’t you emphasise the needs of the people? That is why the student movement said, number one is to create prosperity. If you address the issue of having enough food, better housing, clothing, medical care, education, market for what you produce, security, then you will be able to create prosperity for these people. That became our historical mission number one,” he said.
“Prosperity is to come from two channels; producing a good or a service and selling it. But also the other channel will be education because with education you get rid of ignorance and superstition. Education therefore enhances prosperity but then the major factor that will support prosperity is somebody to buy what you produce.”
The President however explained that in order to fully achieve the prosperity of Ugandans, citizens must emphasise patriotism instead of sectarianism of religions and tribes.
“If you look at the whole country, the complementarity of buying and selling within the tribes is very low. There’s more buying and selling between the tribes. That is why this student movement said instead of emphasising sectarianism of religion and tribe, let us emphasise patriotism. Patriotism which means loving your country. This principle of the NRM is not just guesswork, it was scientifically arrived at,” he said.
President Museveni further expounded that when Uganda settles down, establishes peace and production starts on a large scale, people will realize that the internal market is not enough, then they have to look at the East African and African market.
“That is why the second principle of the NRM is Pan Africanism and we are working patiently. We revived the East African Community, and we are aiming at the East African Federation; to have one East African country so that you can create a good structure for our wealth creators,” he said.
“How can we benefit from these African markets? You cannot benefit from them if you are ignorant and if you are not engaged in wealth creation. You must be a money maker with food security to benefit from these markets that is why we talk of socio-economic transformation through Education and participation of wealth creation. We go further and guide you that wealth creation sectors are four; commercial agriculture with “ekibaro”, artisanship and manufacturing, services and ICT. This is the guidance of the NRM in the issue of prosperity.”
The President also revealed that the second historical mission of the NRM is strategic security.
“In order to ensure strategic security, again we need to work on a Pan African basis. Here in Uganda, we are secure and much stronger but there are some problems in some East African countries. That is why it would be easier to solve problems of security on the continent on a Pan African basis or at least on a regional basis and that is why we insist on the integration of East Africa. Fortunately, we have the swahili language, we can talk and therefore we can build a very powerful state here,” he stated.
“The third one is “undugu”, the brotherhood. Why don’t you use this undugu to help to build a powerful state to guarantee prosperity and our strategic security?” he wondered.
The Director of CID, AIGP Tom Magambo thanked President Museveni for always giving them inspiring advice on how better they can serve the people of Uganda.
He also reminded the President that two years ago he gave them a task to rebuild the CID and for the last few months, they have managed to work around to see how they can achieve the task.
“In the last two years, we have tried to follow your strategic guidance. One of the core priorities you guided us is on ideological and mindset change, so part of our activities daily has been to try to prepare our CID officers to understand where the country is going, why we do what we do, when we have crime and how it affects our socio-economic transformation agenda. So all the activities we do in terms of training are basically to have a mindset change,” AIGP Magambo said.
He disclosed that after almost taking most commanders under refresher courses, CID now wants to conduct training in systematic areas because apparently they are realizing that there are some threats such as land conflicts which the directorate must prioritize.
“We also want to have tailored courses where we pick a group of officers and train them how to investigate cases of land fraud and after like three months, we now place them strategically to see whether we can improve the quality of investigations and we shall do that for other areas like drug trafficking. Broadly on our strategic priority which you gave us, mindset change has created a chain of activities,” he informed the President.
“The second one, Your Excellency has been the struggle to place the right people in the right job. We have also had a struggle to have a good lawyer, but he is in the wrong position. You have a good interpreter, but he is in the wrong deployment.”
AIGP. Magambo also noted that part of CID’s effort as they train, is reorganising and redeploying officers to see whether they gradually get better feedback.
“In the coming months we shall be having the best call Centre in the whole country which shall be open to the public so that our people are able to have an audience with us and raise complaints. We have also realised that we cannot fight crime alone so we have to engage stakeholders.”
The Director of Human Resource Development-Uganda Police, AIGP. Godfrey Golooba said the officers are in the fourth cohort that they have trained at Kabalye Police Training School after realising that Kibuli was a bit more developed, and it was no longer conducive for such training.
“We decided with Ndugu Tom to move the CID Training School to Kabalye as we plan to build the school as we shall see,” he said.
AIGP Golooba also said that they are planning to redevelop the 6 police training schools to more desired standards.
