During the Cabinet retreat in Kyankwanzi on Sunday, President Museveni tasked security minister Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde to take the lead in fighting corruption.

The ministers, permanent secretaries and members of the NRM central executive committee unanimously endorsed the President’s proposal on account that the Inspector General of Government lacks the capacity to fight corruption because the office is understaffed and under-facilitated. Their diagnosis was correct but their drug prescription was flawed.

At the same retreat, the IGG, Ms Irene Mulyagonja, complained that her office was failing to fight corruption because of understaffing and under-funding.

This, therefore, (if the retreat delegates believed these issues) was to endorse a decision to increase the IGG’s capacity in these areas instead of shifting the docket to security agencies.

Unless these bottlenecks are addressed, even the security forces will not fight corruption. So instead of duplicating work, let the resources the government intends to give to security forces to fight corruption be given to the IGG. The IGG office has so far indicated it can do a good job in fighting corruption if it’s given more facilitation.

Corruption in the security forces is at its highest with ghost soldiers on payroll, inflated purchase of military hardware, etc. This cannot be the same institution to entrust with fighting corruption when it has failed to fight corruption within its own ranks.

In 2014 the National Agricultural Advisory Services was derided for failing to transform agriculture to deliver success of the Prosperity for All programme due to corruption and bureaucracy. The army was drafted to take over the management under the new code-name of Operation Wealth Creation. But the situation worsened with farmers getting seeds that could not germinate or receiving poor and or sickly livestock that died shortly after delivery to the recipients. Reports of soldiers giving out the Operation Wealth Creation items to relatives and friends abound.

In 2012, the army attempted large scale agricultural production to boost Uganda’s food security. Today, nobody can accuse the army of helping Uganda export a single tonne of food from the army farm. There is the UPDF Engineering Brigade which the country was told had been formed to handle construction of key infrastructure projects because the civilian contractors were corrupt. That Brigade has never constructed a single road.

Let’s get serious with the fight against corruption and empower the IGG to do the job rather than engaging security forces.