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By Mulengera Reporters
Even after deploying his blue-eyed boy Vincent Bagire there, President Museveni’s attitude towards civil servants working under the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MoFA) didn’t change from lukewarm to more favorable.
He, for years, had been quarreling that the Ministry wasn’t doing enough to support his socio-economic transformation of Uganda enough by luring significant numbers of tourists and FDI-carrying foreign investors to the country.
This explains why he resorted to leveraging a category called ‘Special Envoys’ to do most of the diplomatic work, after realizing things weren’t getting done as rapidly as he desires to see. That negative attitude by Museveni explains why MoFA was for many years one of the most underfunded Ministries.
And when he became PSST, Ramathan Goobi reflected on the role Foreign Affairs has to play in the realization of the President’s ambition to have the economy or GDP of Uganda register the 10-fold growth from $60bn it is today to $500bn by 2040.
The 10-fold growth has to be achieved through the identified critical sectors (ATMS), which include tourism. To understand more about how tourism would be leveraged to achieve the 10-fold growth strategy, Goobi travelled to see the state in which Uganda’s 37 foreign Missions abroad are in.
While there, he interacted with staff and he was appalled to see the squalid conditions under which they operated, amidst acute funding constraints. Many of the missions were dilapidated and with no money being allocated to them beyond salaries and overheads (recurrent expenditures on things like rent, utilities etc).
In simple terms, there was no cash to do the real work for which those foreign Missions exist. Goobi realized that there was no way the foreign missions were going to play any role in growing FDIs and tourism receipts if this situation wasn’t mitigated. The missions’ premises required comprehensive reconstruction and also appropriate funding.
Goobi shared his experiences or findings with Gen Salim Saleh and made him see this wasn’t right because many of these missions were in high-GDP countries which the $500bn-seeking Uganda couldn’t afford to disregard. The missions had to be facilitated to enable them engage in economic and commercial diplomacy and this is the case he eloquently made to the President in a subsequent meeting.
Museveni told him he was aware of the potential role the foreign missions can play but he had long given up because he had been frustrated by lack of effective leadership at MoFA. He made it clear to Goobi he was disappointed that things hadn’t changed even under his cadre Vincent Bagiire in whom he initially had lots of hopes.
He told Goobi he was tired of MoFA PSs coming to him with a begging bowl always; only asking for more funding without demonstrating why such investment was justified. In the presence of John Mulimba and Bagiire himself, Museveni told Goobi that Uganda had limited financial resources with many competing demands. That he didn’t want to invest money in a Ministry which he clearly knew wouldn’t bring him any returns on investment.
Goobi proposed that the President does his part, which is funding MoFA, and then demand for results. “Your Excellence kindly do this for me as we build this economy,” he reportedly pleaded. That is how Museveni reluctantly agreed to fund the Economic & Commercial Diplomacy Strategy under MoFA to the tune of Shs120bn annually and this is to be done for five years. This July is going to be the second year this is being prioritized and the target is to have Shs600bn invested in foreign missions by the time the five years’ period lapses.
Ambassador Richard Kabonero, who was supposed to have left (at the rank of Commissioner) on the account of age (becoming 60), was engaged to keep around longer in order to oversee the implementation of the strategy from 3rd floor of MoFA headquarters in Kampala from where he supervises the ECD intervention. He works with a team of M&E specialists to ensure staff at missions deliver.
With exception of the ones at Khartoum, Angola and New York (because much such work can be done by Washington) all the other missions are annually getting between Shs5bn and Shs7bn to amplify commercial and economic diplomacy. This will go on for five years and within that period, Goobi assured Museveni there will be value for money by way of increased FDIs and tourism receipts.
Because Museveni assured him that he is the one he will hang if the strategy doesn’t work out, Goobi continues to be tough on each and every mission head and their staff while demanding that they deliver quantifiable results. He doesn’t want those vague reports of ‘I met so & so and the prospects are promising.’ Each mission has to demonstrate real progress through the Richard Kabonero-led ECD strategy secretariat.
AMB. NAPEYOK BLACKLISTED
As of January, the strategy had been going on for 6 months and all mission heads were invited to Kampala for a review conference at Mestil Hotel in Nsambya to demonstrate to the PSST the progress that was being made. Yet one powerful Ambassador stood out for her fearless defiance during that conference. That was H.E Elizabeth Paula Napeyok who also serves as Dean of Ambassador because she is currently the longest-serving, having first become ambassador in 1986. Today, she represents Uganda as an ambassador to Rome and oversees several other central European countries.
Her staying away from such an important review conference in Kampala at the time all mission heads were looking forward to the POATE conference (Pearl of Africa Tourism Expo) risked inciting other more junior ambassadors into defiance and it indeed greatly demoralized Ramathan Goobi. Being the dean of Ambassadors, many look at Napeyok as a standard bearer. Indeed, many left Mestil wondering how the others ambassadors will continue complying with directives from the headquarters if their own dean (most senior) is that contemptuous of Bagiire, the PS.
It was a three-day review event which all MoFA Commissioners and PS Bagiire intently attended. Napeyok, a mother of triplets who is also related to a powerful female judge in Kampala and to an ex-chairman of a powerful committee of Parliament, didn’t show up and wasn’t apologetic about it.
Mr. Sekabembe, the accounting officer at the Ugandan mission in Rome (which oversees Uganda’s interests in much of central Europe) was present and he is the one who was crucified on behalf of his boss Napeyok who provocatively stayed away from the review meeting.
The accounting officer explained why the billions given to the Rome Mission last July had remained unutilized, implying that no FDI and tourists-attracting work had been done at all even when their mission covers that part of Europe which is home to big economies like Italy, which is a high GDP economy with a lot of potential. As of January, not less than Shs3bn of the ECD strategy billions allocated was lying on the account, unutilized as chaos engulfed Uganda’s mission in Rome.
Members at the Mestil meeting were angry that instead of bowing before Goobi and acknowledging his authority as the PSST who personally convinced the President to allocate the money, some of the officials at the Ugandan mission in Rome had resorted to contacting their allies at Parliament to rebuke the PSST and Bagiire for resolving not to give any more such funds to the mission because work wasn’t being done.
Bagiire stood his ground and not only halted subsequent releases to the Ugandan mission in Rome but also wrote a letter directing the accounting officer Sekabembe to return the unspent billions to the consolidated fund. Sekabembe’s boss wrote letters quarreling about the same but Bagiire stood his ground.
The banking executives in Rome where the money was being kept got confused when Kampala wrote letters demanding transfer of the money yet the ambassador contradicted the same saying those writing from Kampala had no authority to do so.
Sekabembe found himself caught between a rock and hard place. PSST Goobi also wrote calling for sanity but Napeyok, the powerful diplomat from Karamoja, ignored him and continued disregarding PS Bagire’s views.
Reflecting on the circumstances under which Martha Aringa died sometime last year, many staffers at the Rome embassy have lately been communicating to PS Bagire demanding to be transferred on grounds that the working environment there is simply too toxic.
Goobi is hurting that because of absence of basic things (such as a written work plan on how to implement the ECD strategy), tourism and FDI potential of the big economy that Italy is hasn’t yet been harnessed yet Gen Museveni badly wants to see numbers trickling in.
Yet Napeyok’s supporters inside the MoFA universe believe there is nothing Bagiire can do to the well-connected senior lady from Karamoja who they are satisfied will serve in government till the end of time since sanctioning her in anyway will cause the PS to be perceived as marginalizing Karamajongs who historically have been one of the most vulnerable communities of Uganda.
Such frustrations notwithstanding, Goobi is determined to fight on because so far information from UTB indicates that the Richard Kabonero-supervised ECD strategy is working and there is hope the H.E Museveni’s expectations, as raised by Ramathan Goobi, will be exceeded in five years’ time. As of that time, Shs600bn will have gone into economic and commercial diplomacy initiatives being implemented at Uganda’s 37 diplomatic missions abroad.
Yet more recently, Bagire found himself at loggerheads with the same Napeyok over his defied directives calling on her to facilitate/accelerate Uganda’s artistes’ participation in a prominent art festival that is upcoming in Venice.
On failing to harmonize with Ambassador Napeyok, some of the contracted service providers in Venice found themselves having to bypass the embassy in Rome and directly calling Bagire’s mobile phone in Kampala in order to get things done!
It has consistently been made clear to the increasingly disregarded Bagiire that Napeyok is a very powerful ambassador about whom there is nothing he can ever do even when he is ordinarily the CEO for all Uganda’s diplomacy business and ordinarily her immediate boss. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
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