President Yoweri Museveni has urged leaders to be at the forefront of encouraging their electorate to deeply get involved in calculated and commercial farming if they are to transition into the money economy.
The President made the call while delivering a lecture on wealth creation to the NRM parliamentary caucus who are in a 10-day retreat at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi district.
“This is a very important topic for you and me also because this is what I have been involved in for the last 60 years. Uganda is rich in terms of natural resources, land, forests, grasslands, water and everything."
The President rooted for MPs as leaders to spearhead the movement of social-economic transformation of society but not to entrust the task to extension workers in the Ministry of Agriculture. He noted that wealth creation is about social-economic transformation, adding that he normally gets problems with groups that spend a lot of time on extension workers.
“What are they going to extend? They know nothing because the issue is social-economic transformation,” he emphasized.
Gen. Museveni who asked MPs to always internalize the anatomy of society, also tasked them to concentrate on the supervision, mobilization and guidance of the population in programs introduced by the government like the PDM which is run by the people themselves.
The President asked the MPs to concentrate on preaching the gospel of social-economic transformation, of going into the money economy. “We did several experiments including Operation Wealth Creation, NAADs, and so on, but finally now we have come to PDM, which is stakeholder-run. Now your job is to mobilize those stakeholders and supervise them and guide them, together with all of us,” he added.
President Museveni exhaustively took the MPs through the history of European transition from lower classes to modernity urging members of Parliament to mirror that evolution. “This is very, very important because it's very dangerous to be in leadership when you don't know the anatomy of society. It is very dangerous for you, the President emphasized.
The President said that European society by the time of the French Revolution was a four-class society. “You had the aristocrats, the feudalists and the middle class whom they were calling the bourgeoisie. I think these examples could help you by looking at that structure of society,” he counselled.
He reminded them of the early message of the NRA spirit which stated that if you want to contribute durably and sustainably to the social economic transformation of society you must first understand the ideology and methods of work of the revolution. “This will help you solve so many problems,” he advised.
The retreat which entered day six today has since attracted over 400MPs both from the ruling party and the independent NRM-leaning.
Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Robinah Nabbanja, NRM Secretary-General, Rt. Hon. Richard Todwong, Ministers, members of the Central Executive Committee, and NRM Secretariat leadership among others graced the retreat.