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In the second part of our exclusive in-depth interview, Col. NUWE AMANYA MUSHEGA tells SHIFA MWESIGYE AND IBRAHIM SSEMUJJU NGANDA about his attempts to revamp the education system during the nine years he was minister of education, his stint at the Ministry of Public Service and how he failed to persuade Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye not to challenge Gen. Yoweri Museveni in the 2001 presidential elections.

At the time I went to the Ministry of Education, my predecessor had established the Education Commission. It was supposed to look at the whole education system in the country and recommend how to make it better and relevant.
The Kajubi Report was presented in 1987, shortly before I moved there in 1989.

So one of my main activities was to continue with the work of my predecessor and write a white paper out of that report. It generated a lot of debate and I think was eventually approved around 1992.

That was what I would call continuity. One leader called it a process in motion—you make adjustments, you don’t just abandon it. The second challenge was that I asked Makerere University to give me some statistics. There was this argument that Uganda had a lot of educated people. That if only we could have peace, and all Ugandans returned, there would be no problem with manpower. That was the thinking I also had. So I got a shock of my life when Makerere gave me figures of how many students had graduated since Makerere was established. Don’t forget that Makerere was the university for East Africa. So all the people who went through Makerere; the dead, the living, those from abroad, those in politics, it had not graduated 2,000 doctors! It had graduated around 2,000 science teachers and slightly above 3,000 arts teachers.

It had graduated about 1,800 in agriculture and less than 1,000 in veterinary medicine. When Makerere was at its peak, I remember this figure very well, just after independence in 1965; the total enrolment was 888 students. So even if all these doctors: the dead, the living and those abroad came back to practise medicine in Uganda, they were no where near [enough] the close to 16 million people at that time. That means that we had a small pool of manpower to run the economy. Then I got other figures of students who had completed A-level. They were around 0.3%. Of the age group that was supposed to be in A-level, only about 0.3% was in school, 11% were doing O-level and 50% in primary. So, the education statistics were extremely staggering.

Another problem we found was that during the second UPC government, just like we are creating districts now, it was easy to find ramshackle primary schools and turn them into secondary schools. Everything was turned into a secondary school and a teacher training college. The argument was that we are bringing services closer to the people. So we found out that some of these schools just existed on paper.
Unqualified teachers

Everybody you found was a tutor in the TTCs. You know there is a difference between a tutor and a teacher. So there was a situation whereby people who had never been teachers were now teaching people how to become teachers.

In some of the big schools you would find 40 students in Senior One or Senior Two. You would find that they have listed a farm manager when there is no farm. But when you come to see figures in the Ministry of Education, they are higher. Some start telling you the students had been sent home because they had an eye virus. Then you say, how do you send children home instead of quarantine?
People who were very instrumental in that area were my colleagues in the ministry; Ms Joyce Mpanga and John Ntimba.

Then I had two permanent secretaries; one for administration and the other for planning. Mr. Katano was PS for planning and I think the current Clerk to Parliament, Aeneas Tandekwire, was under secretary for finance.
We went through the exercise of rationalising schools. Ms Joyce Mpanga concentrated largely on teacher training colleges. We had Ntimba who was in charge of higher education, paying attention to the secondary school sector and the tertiary.

Then I set off a study headed by Prof. Odaet Kupuliano, a professor of education, to tell us how many institutions we really needed to meet the needs of the country. His recommendation was that we don’t need more than 34 teacher training colleges.
But he said that because of political reasons, you need to have one teacher training college per district—which came to 38 or 40 at that time. [At that time] we had 95 primary teacher training colleges. He recommended adequate well trained tutors.

This became a big issue; do we continue lying to people that we are bringing services closer to you when our own children are being educated in Kampala? Or do we take the bull by the horns and amalgamate the TTCs, the secondary schools and return some of these so-called TTCs to the original purpose of being good primary schools?
Of course that primary school was never meant to be adequate for secondary. Then that primary school would be shifted to under trees.

We had to take that controversial decision in the interest of the country. We reduced to fewer than 65 teacher training colleges in the first phase. There is no single teacher training college we closed that was not visited by a team either led by me or Mrs Mpanga.
We found that we had inadequate skilled labour force. We set up a team which visited India; we found out that you cannot industrialise when you have no manpower. Prime Minister Nehru set up what they called the All India Institute of Technology. It is the one that produced manpower to transform India.

Then we sent another team to South Africa. These whites were able to transform South Africa through what they call technicals. Prof. Edward Rugumayo was the High Commissioner to South Africa. He is the one who brought it to my notice. So they went and wrote reports, some of these were implemented, some were not.

Private students

Now the issue of tertiary education was that Makerere had to start training more people.
And when I was on a trip to India, I met some students; they were paying between $3,000-5,000 per annum, including maintenance. When we asked Makerere, they said they had capacity to admit more students if some requirements were put in place. And the calculation was I think half a million shillings per student at that time. So we embarked on what we call private students. The argument was that if Makerere had the capacity to house more students, and parents were willing to pay for their children to go to India and England and everywhere, why subject a parent to pay $3000 when they could spend Shs 400,000 in Kampala?
There was a strike by some Makerere people, saying that it is government role to pay for every body. Our argument was that government should pay what it can afford and those who can afford should assist in order to build adequate manpower.

Makerere was closed but we stuck to our guns and started admitting private students. This was also based on a study by Kajubi. It was not that we were struck by lightening like Saul turning into Paul. It was based on a study that was before me.

What we did also was to say, there were only about 10 secondary schools around Kampala which were doing very well, the rest had turned into dormitories for children.
The Prime Minister then was arguing that we should have quotas for districts. My argument was that quotas are dangerous because you cannot bring someone who failed in A-level and put them in engineering school or medicine just because you want to please everybody.

So we said the answer to that was to get facilities and equip more schools upcountry so that they can perform and come into Makerere by their own right.
We selected 38 secondary schools and Ntimba was critical in this area. That year we persuaded the Cabinet and Parliament to pass a budget. We gave these schools adequate equipment, chemicals for laboratories, enough text books. Three, four years down the road, these schools started performing very well. I remember one school, Aduku in Apac, did so well that they were called for a party with the Prime Minister. And we persuaded Cosmas Adyebo [then Prime Minister] that the solution was not to create a quota system but provide facilities because students can perform well anywhere if they were facilitated.

So you started the private students scheme in Makerere?

I am not the one who started it; it started during my time. And the results of it are obvious.
The third element was despising of some schools. That in order to perform you had to be in a boarding school! At that time if a boarding school performed poorly, the headmaster would be transferred to a day school. If you are doing very well, then you are taken to a boarding school. The head teacher of a boarding school was paid more than that of a day school. So we said no; we want good headmasters to man day schools. We selected five; Kololo S.S., Kitante S.S., Old Kampala, Mengo S.S. and Entebbe S.S. to start with.

And my argument was, why adopt a double shift yet the students were from relatively poor homes? The double shift was doing well mainly in India because these were students from well to do families. So we said let these students (in day schools) also study the whole day and with good headmasters.

One of the head teachers was Mrs. Male. She transformed Mengo S.S. in a manner that is indescribable. And when the World Bank president visited, his wife was interested in computers, I took her there instead of taking her to the Gayazas, Buddos, Kisubis and Kibulis.

Within two to three years, these day schools started being among the top 10 in the country.
And I heard that they want to return to double shifts to solve the problem. I believe double shifts should wait. Instead, build more schools, train more teachers and equip them with adequate facilities.
In fact, one of the teachers in these schools; the current deputy chairperson of the Electoral Commission (Sr. Magoba), became prominent because her school Immaculate Heart Nyakibare (Rukungiri) was one of the 38 selected and it started being the best school in that region. It opened the eyes of the mighty, asking who is this who can make a rural school perform?

Universal Primary Education

Before I go to UPE, let me mention the attempt to create adequate manpower in the relevant fields. There was a big shortage of administrators and accountants. I talked to the association of accountants. I think at that time there were less than 24 professional accountants; they were 11 or 12 in the whole country.

So we discussed with authorities in that area and Makerere. We agreed to start MUBS [Makerere University Business School]. Its original purpose was to train people in MBA and also charted accountants by correspondence through institutions in England.

Our goal was that Makerere should have specialised institutions; MUBS for business and accountancy, Kabanyoro for agriculture and related sciences, then Mulago for medicine and related sciences. I think they are now doing degrees in nursing. I think Makerere now offers degrees in secretarial work. Now we are beginning to have Gombolola chiefs who are graduates.
Makerere administration is another matter we will not touch now (look out for Mushega’s candid comments on Makerere in the next issue-ED).

When we came into power, we promised that we should have universal education in a given time; I think 10 years. Then I think the President in one of his campaign manifestos argued that we should have universal primary education. Of course you know his manifesto is written by a number of people. He committed that we should have four children per family looked after by the state. The argument then was that your job is not just to produce children and government takes care of them, you must also be responsible—have a manageable family.

But recently I heard some people (Museveni has been heard making such an argument–ED) arguing that your job is to produce and ours (the government) is to educate, which I think is a bit irresponsible.

4 per family fails

So we had a big debate in Cabinet whether we should go for four children per family or go for universal education.
One of the proposals made by the ministry was that; let us start with Primary One. Make P.1 free, the following year P.1 and P.2, until we reach P.7. That would allow us time to train teachers, build classrooms, develop the curriculum and put resources in place.

When that became difficult, studies had also shown that the biggest drop out rate was in P.4.
So another proposal was that we start with P.4, then P.5, P.6, P.7 and eventually work backwards. The gist of the two approaches was to start UPE in a standard and planned way. The school of thought which said, no we go for four children per family prevailed.

So when we went to register children in 1997, we were not registering for UPE. We were registering all children but government would take on four per family.
We were estimating that 60% of the children would fall under four and 40% would be outside.
But we found out that 94% of the children had qualified under the four children per family and only about 6% had registered as non UPE.

A person with eight children had all of them in school but only four registered under their names. We came back and met the President and other leaders and said what do we do?
The decision we took was kama mbaya mbaya, (come what may) implementation should begin. In some places children who were seven years came with their sisters who were four clinging onto them. People who had dropped out of primary, with beards, also came back. I don’t know the reasons why they did this.

So we took a decision to create a class for the small kids. We said don’t send anybody home, let’s fight to take on everybody; the four children per family actually had failed. You could see that if you were to enforce it, you would create a new controversy.

That is how UPE became UPE. It has had its ups and downs but obviously it has taken off. My only worry is that current figures show that the drop out rate is very high and that needs to be addressed. The argument is that when children have finished primary education, some of course won’t continue but most should continue. They become good for themselves and for the country. There are certain things they will [never] do; like higher standards of hygiene, they will be better producers of wealth. When they finish secondary of course they are even better equipped. So I am always in support of people accessing secondary education but we should always take into account our capabilities so that we don’t only give people education but they get adequate and good education at whatever level,

Anything we could have done better?

I talk to my colleague in the Ministry of Education once in a while. I prefer not to advise her [Namirembe Bitamazire] on radio. When I have time I meet her or the PS and tell them my views. As I mentioned earlier, I used to meet headmasters, sometimes there would be a big disagreement between Mushega the person and Mushega the Minister of Education. And quite often the two do not agree. What do I mean?

Me as an individual I have my own views on how things should move. We used to have regular meetings with my deputies; Mpanga, Ntimba, Jim Muhwezi and Francis Babu. Even when we had our own disagreements, with Ntimba we would say, “let’s compare notes”.

Then with the others we would go for lunch to a Chinese restaurant and debate. So that when you come back as ministers to meet staff, you have synchronised your thinking adequately.

Secondly, you had to call a meeting of senior staff and head teachers from up-country. So you come with certain views and when you subject them to the professionals they tell you how weak some of them are, how not implementable some of them are; what you had over looked!
At the end of the day, what you agreed on is what you take to Parliament and people come to think that all those are Mushega’s views when actually 70% are not.
I used to joke with my speech writers that when I am reading my speech I see some of you nodding because I am making a point you wrote.

So in any situation, you must learn how to push some of the views you believe in strongly and how to make adjustments to accommodate others, otherwise you become a lone fellow and people may sing your name and praise you but as soon as you leave, nothing works.

Are there things you think should have been done differently?

On UPE, we should have started in a standard way. May be instead of seven years we should have reduced it to four years to make adequate planning.
By the way I should point out that the World Bank was opposed to UPE. Sometimes it’s good to have a home grown policy. But when it worked, the World Bank was the immediate supporter.

In the admission of private students at Makerere I think we should have asked each faculty to declare its existing capacity in terms of lecture rooms, facilities like laboratories, libraries, lecturers. So that we say we can admit this much when we meet this level, whatever the demand we shall not add until adequate facilities for additional students are added.

I think we should have worked out a unit cost; I think Makerere has it now. What does it actually cost to educate a student in a given faculty? So that when government says we are going to support 4,000 they should send money based on the cost per student.

By the way, how these 4,000 students came about was that when Besigye was campaigning he said he would sponsor 4,000, I think we also rushed and said we shall sponsor 4,000 students.

But overall, I have no regrets in whatever decision we took because whatever we did was in the interest of the country.
And also, where we had shortfalls we learn from it and you tell your successor that here I made a mistake. If he is willing to listen you don’t repeat the same mistakes rather than passing on the blame to others.

What was your contribution to sports?

Sports was not as well attended to as it should have been because it was thinly tapped. In fact, at one time we had one officer at the sports desk. Now there are a few more. But of course I found out that my predecessor had started the Namboole project. The foundation stone was laid when I was a minister and was completed when I was still in the ministry. So, one of the achievements was that Namboole was started from beginning to end without a hitch.

But recently I saw a lot of people there cooking and collecting firewood which I think is very unfortunate; to turn it into some kind of Internally Displaced People’s camp. But the big problem was the way the sports section was managed. It was like a lions den. Some people once quoted me as saying that sports councils are not for potato growers. It was based on reality. There was one person from Kabale district; previously he had attended a meeting as being from Kabale. When we were meeting for athletics he came as a delegate from Kisoro. I said but the other day you were from Kabale, now you are from Kisoro, where do you belong? He said I am also from Kisoro because I have a small garden of Irish potatoes in Kisoro. So when I said this was not a meeting for potato growers, I was referring to reality on the ground.

These people (the administrators) used to arrange syndicates in Kampala. You get somebody from Kotido, Soroti, Mbale, when they are all around they form a group and when they have got enough people they say they have formed an association.

You find there is a Uganda Sports Association; they don’t exist but they are collecting money from international organisations to live on. When you touch them they say government is interfering in sports.
I remember in one of the meetings we had arranged a delegate’s conference with Mr. Lutaaya who was the president of National Council of Sports. A few days earlier, a gentleman I don’t want to name went and collected a few people; they went to a hotel and chose a name and sent it to Europe.

One of the major problems in sports is that a clique of people sit together, they pretend to be representing the sports fraternity in the country kumbe they are just carrying the Ugandan flag with little preparation on the ground. I found out that whenever we sent these people [to international events]; the football team administrators would demand money from them—25 dollars a day. If you don’t pay they would not put you on the team.

We decided that each sports person should sign for their money from the bank. You know at that time they had a system of allocation of foreign exchange. The sports people were very happy, but the administrators were very annoyed with me.

On the whole, we didn’t do as much in sport. I think we need to because sport is very critical to the nation for the physical and mental capabilities of the citizens. We should not look at sports purely as competing on the international platform; we must build it from the grassroots. We had actually started selecting a few schools in Kapchorwa, Kabale, Arua for long distance [running] so that 15 years down the road these young boys and girls would be the Akii Buas.

Why were you removed from education?

There was a cabinet reshuffle and I was transferred to the Ministry of Public Service just like previously I had been transferred to education from local government.
I know there [is a lot of] speculation but I am not going to say why. But I had been in education for nine years and nine years is quite a full mouth.

When I moved to public service, the pressures were less; I had time to attend to myself and my family. Education is quite a sleepless night because everybody is an expert in education while in public service very few people came to interfere with what you do because some even don’t know it exists.

However, the Ministry of Public Service was quite challenging because at that time they were continuing with restructuring public service. One of the challenges I had was job evaluation so that people don’t just get pay rises because they have demonstrated but because the economy needs it, the public needs it and they have a role they are playing.

So you say, what is the value weight of an engineer compared to a lawyer? Why should a lawyer get much money when a doctor is getting less? We got a lot of interference from these international organisations. They themselves were heavily loaded with staff; even for a small project they send you 10 people, but they want to find one person running a whole department.

I remember when the President was addressing us and he said the private sector was the engine of growth. One civil servant whispered to me that if the private sector is the engine of growth, then civil servants are the oil to protect the engine. If you don’t have the oil in the engine you can knock. I took it heartily.
Then the second one was that there was a deliberate policy by these international organisations that government must pay salaries lower than the private sector. I don’t understand that logic.

Why should I not pay my worker very well because my neighbour will complain if I want him to perform? And that debate is not yet over. To artificially keep the salaries of my civil servants very low was one of my problems because it will make them also inefficient. Everybody says if you pretend to pay me I pretend to work.
I still believe we need adequate civil service. To cut down artificially in order to please other people may lead to problems.

It needs to be adequately rewarded within the resource pool of the country. I have never known, and I am part of the problem, why an RDC should be paid better than a civil servant like an agricultural officer in a district, a teacher in a school! Those are the issues I found going on, I continued and I left before they were completed.
I remember we used to have transport allowance for people with vehicles. Then I introduced what they call footing allowance. I said if you are paying somebody with a vehicle to replace his tyres when they wear out, somebody who comes on foot should also be paid to replace their shoes.

One of the changes we made was the complaints of the drivers that when they travel upcountry the big men kept the money for their allowance and fuel. My policy was that when you are travelling upcountry, a driver should be in charge of the fuel allowance and his allowance so that he knows when to refuel the car. Then you can reprimand him when things go wrong.

You organised a meeting of Banyankore to persuade Dr. Kizza Besigye to step down?

That is not true. You know we were still under the Movement System. While we didn’t support Besigye’s candidature, I never opposed it either, because he was a free man to stand. That post is not for individuals.
You know, like in organisations you want to have harmony because there was one school of thought which wanted to declare Museveni a sole candidate even at the level of NEC.
And we opposed it because that would be against the principle of individual merit. Any individual who meets the minimum qualifications can stand.

I called the meeting in the Ministry of Public Service to say this man is not an enemy; he is just exercising his democratic rights. At that time most of us wrongly believed the President would respect the term limits. That he was going to go after his second term. So the debate was; really bwana Besigye, why don’t you step down so that we can for the first time in the history of the country have a peaceful hand over to the next generation, another government and you can contest next time!
He said “No, no, no; if you want me to stand down, let him [Museveni] also stand down”.

The main point is that, “yes I called the meeting with colleagues to say that even if somebody is standing against him, he is not an enemy”. This is a comrade you can talk to and show him your reasons; if he refuses he goes ahead.
It didn’t work out. By the way, not everything you try works; some work, some don’t and you try again.

At that time, you know the problem of people, including you journalists, was that people feared to be seen with Besigye. I dared and said me I will call the meeting. A good number of people also feared, so I volunteered. I didn’t hold any big post in the Movement.

But just as you are interviewing me, are you interviewing me because I am a Munyankole? I think you are interviewing me because you think I have something little to contribute. I happen to have been born a Munyankole and that is not changeable, and I have no regrets about it.
Some of the views I developed I was in schools in Ankole, a lot I developed when I was in other schools here in Buganda or abroad, meeting people like you.

It’s what you are that should matter, although your background should also matter. So the main reason was that people feared to call the meeting and I dared to call it. I went and reported to the President, so it was not an Ankole affair.

The other day when Besigye was arrested, I went to check on him in the morning. While I was there (prison), I also visited my friend from Buddo (Aggrey Kiyingi) while he was facing charges of murdering his wife. I was his roommate at Buddo; I call him my senior, he used to call me his junior. By talking to him, I didn’t mean that I approved of or disapproved of what he was accused of. That is my life; no body should stop me from talking to my friends because they have differed with them. They make their enemies, I make mine.

You can bring your friends to me but I don’t agree that you should also bring me your enemies. But you can ask me to solve some problems with some of your enemies. That is my policy and I am going to stick to it.

When we went to the NEC, some people who I shared views with said “no, Besigye should not stand; we should declare Museveni a sole candidate”. I said no, let Besigye stand and I told the President that some of those people who are singing here that you are great when it comes to campaign time they are not likely to campaign for you. And some of the people who are quiet may be the ones to campaign for you.

And I can assure you even today, those people who were singing praises, if he was in trouble tomorrow some of us will pay a higher price and we will be questioned more. They will be the ones to jump ship and say, me I don’t know these people; I was not with them in the bush.
So you advise your close friends very closely and very dearly because you value them, you don’t join the bandwagon of praise-singers.

I remember when we were students with Mr. [Ruhakana] Rugunda, we went to see Idi Amin as army commander. He said “I don’t like people who say Amin oyee, Amin oyee, when in their heart they mean not”.
So you can meet a lot people who sing your name and when you disappear, they say naye owaye tukoleki. I don’t belong to that category of people.