Big Interview: Karamoja is suffering because of our broken systems, says MP Magoola

Media reports show that the food insecurity situation in Karamoja sub region continues to worsen with hundreds of people dying.

Speaking to The Nile Post in an interview, Rachael Magoola, the Bugweri Woman MP said famine in most parts of the country especially in Karamoja sub region would have been addressed if the country had a properly working system with serious ministries responsible.

The veteran Afrigo Band singer also attributed the increasing teenage pregnancies in her constituency to poverty.

Excerpts below:

*****************************************************************

First things first. What inspired you to join politics because many people thought you were doing well musically?

What inspired me to join politics is I have this principle in my life, if I am not happy about something, I try to do something about it. And I was not happy about what I was seeing in my community. I kept thinking that we can do better and leaders are the foundation of making change. So I don’t know how much change I will make in my community but I have done what I can in the first one year of my tenure as a member of Parliament. I have a history of family in Parliament. My grandfather joined Parliament in 1945 and my mother joined Parliament in 2001. So I have a history in the family of leadership.

How is Bugweri and how are your people doing?

The constituency is okay. It is just facing the [usual] challenges of poverty, no access to social services and Covid-19 pandemic aftermath, too many teenage pregnancies. I think there must be over 10,000 babies right now, the ones who were delivered to young mothers during the pandemic. That is a huge challenge we need to address.

As leaders in the district, how are you confronting this issue of teenage pregnancies?

It is going to take a holistic approach for this to get contained because when you don’t address the issue of poverty [teenage pregnancies will continue rising]. This is one of the cycle of poverty when families are poor, young children are more likely at an early age to look out to that boda boda rider who might buy her a pair of shoes, or that Hajji who might marry her and give her a house because she is living in a very poor environment with the family.

Their attraction to education is less because the peers around them are not attending school, kids are not going to school for lack of basic necessities.

You promised to focus on better education, health and agriculture in Bugweri district. Can we say things are now working out well?

I have to confess that it is going very slowly because I had a tour last week in my constituency and I looked at the quality of schools in my constituency, they are so far behind what can produce quality students. I am going to petition the government to come and have a look at what is happening in my constituency. Some of the schools were built in the 50s. The teachers don’t have school houses, so they live far away from the school. Money should be going into primary schools to improve the quality of education, to provide teachers with accommodation so that they are on site and produce a good foundation for primary children but what I saw in my constituency, we are putting money in big seed schools and yet the foundation is broken.

There have been reports that some ministers and MPs don’t attend the plenary. In your view, what could be the problem?

We complain about other people when we are not the one in their shoes. It is possible that these ministers are so engaged with the duties they are given that they find it difficult to attend plenary. We need to talk to the ministers and find out why. This means there must be an issue making it difficult for ministers to attend. We criticise before understanding the reason why they don’t attend the plenary but the speaker directed that more members of the cabinet must attend plenary.

There are reports of food insecurity in many areas of the Karamoja region, in your view, how best can the government address this issue?

First of all, when people start dying, they don't just start dying all of a sudden. It means this problem has been brewing for a few months. What are the leaders in the community doing? Who didn’t see that this is coming?

There is a breakdown in the way our system is working because you should be able to foresee things. How are we planning? We have a ministry of Disaster Preparedness but guess what? People die. What does that ministry do? Do people first die before you remember that you are supposed to be prepared? How did Karamoja reach this point? Who dropped the ball to see that a disaster was looming? These are questions we need to be asking ourselves.

How do you balance music and politics?

Parliament runs from Monday to Friday and the most active days for music are Friday to Sunday. Everything is about time tabling yourself. If I have an important entertainment job to do, I time table myself. I will make sure it is not clashing, it is about priority. So I choose depending on the priority at the moment.

You promised to form a caucus for artistes in the 11th Parliament. How far have you reached with this initiative?

We are working towards putting Uganda Parliamentary Forum for the Creative Industry. We are in the registration process because it has to be registered. The secretariat is in place. We are waiting on URSB to register our name and then we start working. But we have already collaborated with artistes. We have done research in the country on the need for the Ministry of Culture in this country.

The research strongly supports that the creative industry in this country needs to be managed by its own ministry and much of its failure to grow is coming from the fact that there is no ministry which pays direct attention to issues of culture and creative industry. The creative industry is distributed in about six ministries. All these departments need to be under one roof.

In your view, how can an artiste balance music and politics because some of them have been previously banned from singing due to their political affiliation?

There is time for everything. When you are entertaining communities, that is entertainment. When you are playing politics, that is politics. If you mix the two, there is likely to be a clash. My advice is that when you want to entertain people, go and entertain them, let them enjoy themselves. When it comes to politics, let politics be politics. We must also recognise that music and poetry are key in promoting politics but you cannot ignore the fact that there is likely to be a clash. So as an artist you need to know how to manoeuvre and do the right thing in the place so that you are not misunderstood.