Opinion: Intellectualism and morality don't match in Uganda

I first heard from Martin Luther King Jr the maxim: "Intelligence plus character -- that is the goal of true education." It's true, as commonly believed, that people's behaviour or character is a reflection of their nature and nurture. It's also true that people's problems are caused by their character or behaviour.

If some lady on mizigo is quarelsome, she will always engage in physical fights with her neighbours. Her quarelsome character or behaviour will be responsible for her problems.

Away from mizigo ladies, Uganda as country has many problems -- social, economic and political ones. Of the two: nature and nurture, I may not be better positioned to tell which is more responsible for our problems. And for nurture, who nurtured this country? If I'm to trace down the nurture issue, I'll point at colonialism in Uganda.

The British introduced formal education in Uganda to nurture us into literate, thoughtful and sophisticated folks. Perhaps we are now a more intelligent society than they found us. In my opinion, however, our character as a society hasn't changed for better.

Uganda's problems could be more rooted in our character than in our abilities to think, although intellectual bankruptcy feeds into moral bankruptcy, sometimes. At a personal level, many Ugandans have perpetrated corruption, bribery, prostitution, tribalism, nudity, theft et cetera. Many Ugandans have also been victims of the same.

Is formal education of much importance if it doesn't instill better values? What good does it make if a person goes to school to acquire the shrewdness to lead a successful money heist and nothing like a sense of morality? If formal education doesn't instill better values, then an educated person is more dangerous than an illiterate one.

With intellectual enlightenment, an individual of poor values can perpetrate immoralities at a more advanced level -- doing harm to many people or promoting the vice wider. For example; if an illiterate man of poor values chooses to steal, they simply walk down to a city street and grab a phone or handbag from a striding pedestrian. Their intellectual capacity may not be able to code for a robbery beyond such a level.

An enlightened thief on another hand, will plot to rob a bank, loot a national treasury through subtle schemes, hoodwink a national leader into a bad deal on behalf of an entire country etc.

When I first learnt about "corporate prostitution", I couldn't believe it. I was told that educated millennials were marketing their services -- "erotic body to body massage with a happy ending", on social media and different websites. The "happy ending", I'm told, means sexual intercourse.

One can clearly see that the only difference between a slut at Elliot, Kabalagala and other streets popular for pussy vending and the one on social media is sophistication. The enlightened youth taps her clients from social media because she is literate. Since social media content reaches many people per unit time, a slut on social media perpetrates prostitution at a higher level than one in Kabalagala. I guess sluts on social media get overwhelmed with clients.

If one has lived in Uganda, they surely know a thing or two about "Kimansulo" -- where maidens entertain people(men especially) with their nude bodies in closed doors -- during night hours. Kimansulo has been in Uganda for a longtime. Personally, I learnt about the word "Kimansulo" in the early 2000s although I couldn't understand exactly what it meant. As time wore on, I fully understood what it meant.

Today, Kimansulo has has become more sophisticated as it is being perpetrated on social media platforms like TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you think that perpetrators of Bimansulo in early 2000s did so because were not educated, you can't think of the same about these millennials on social media.

It seems, moral degeneration is only going to deepen. Look at a platform like Twitter in Uganda; Twitter brings together Uganda's most educated and intellectually curious youth. But when one scrolls down the news feed on Twitter, one can clearly discern the moral bankruptcy in the tweeps. You can see the tribalism, corruption, prostitution, theft, bribery etc. in them.

Well, if Martin Luther's maxim is to go by, one can conclude that our education has served only half its purpose or, our education is not true.