Nearly every presidential candidate in the 2025/2026 general elections has vowed to fight corruption, if voted into office.
On his part, the incumbent President Yoweri Museveni took a hiatus from the busy campaign trail to appoint a new Inspector General of Government (IGG), Justice Aisha Naluzze Batala, whom the Leader of the Opposition, Joel Ssenyonyi, told journalists on Friday, October 10, 2025 the day she was vetted at parliament that she was “overqualified.”
Meanwhile, the chief of defence forces (CDF), General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, is busy combating entrenched, systemic corruption in the military, dismantling a network of thieves.
When corruption becomes entrenched, it means it has persisted for years such that there has to be a system overhaul to uproot it. Several high-profile arrests have already been made, as investigations continue.
On Thursday, July 24, 2025 the CDF tweeted on his X (formerly Twitter) account @mkainerugaba, ‘The criminals we have arrested within our ranks recently are guilty of stealing over 50 billion shillings from the country! We shall decide their fate in High Command.’
“Steal, but don’t get caught,” corrupt people say, who no longer steal as individuals, but as a group because they believe there is safety in numbers.
This is known as syndicated corruption. This syndicate only exists for as long as they maintain a code of silence, turning their offices into dens of thieves, until they are exposed by an auditor, or a whistleblower.
The Shs 9.3bn Gorilla permit scandal, is a perfect example. After being exposed in the auditor general’s report, on Thursday, October 23, 2025 eleven Uganda Wildlife Authority officials appeared in the Anti-Corruption court, wearing surgical masks, facing 23 counts of corruption. They denied the charges.
“We are all corrupt,” some Ugandans say. I strongly disagree with this statement. Even if corruption has become so widespread nowadays, God- fearing people who value honesty and truthfulness still do exist in this country.
One of the ways of fighting corruption in this country is by the secretary to the Treasury appointing accounting officers with high moral integrity and fiscal discipline. It also requires office accountants, who will not be compromised when approached by the ringleaders of a corruption syndicate, who want to defraud government.
If an accountant is intimidated and recruited into the syndicate, and they begin sharing public funds, then it requires a principled auditor to resist a bribe from the syndicate to silence him, when he comes across false accountability, such as fictitious expenditure, fake activities and forged receipts.
According to the Inspectorate of Government, Uganda loses more than Shs 10 trillion to corruption every financial year. Corrupt people are bad stewards. Stealing taxpayers’ money is a godless act, because it hinders nation-building and the provision of goods and services, which indirectly discourages tax compliance and encourages tax evasion.
People start to wonder why they should pay their taxes when they are not getting good service delivery. The more goods and services, the happier the people living in that country are, because their quality of life and standards of living are high.
Denmark is one such example. Denmark was ranked number one as the least corrupt country in the world in Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
In fact, Denmark has been the least corrupt country in the world for seven years. A February 20, 2025 statement from Denmark’s ministry of Foreign Affairs, Invest in Denmark, reads: “Denmark has once again been ranked the least corrupt country in the world. According to the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International, Denmark has held this top position for the seventh consecutive year.”
The UN’s World Happiness Report (WHR) ranked Denmark the world’s happiest country in 2012 and the world’s second happiest country, for a six-year period, from 2019-2024.
Therefore, according to 2024 world reports, Denmark is in the enviable position of being the least corrupt country in the world, with the second happiest people in the world. It is not surprising then that with such low levels of corruption the Danish are happy.
Uganda was ranked 140 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index. Nevertheless, it is possible to improve our CPI ranking, which will have the ripple effect of increasing our Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
Corruption scandals will come to an end when the national character of this nation changes and society stops glorifying the corrupt, admiring their ill-gotten wealth and praising thieves for being ‘clever.’
How can they be clever when there is a curse in the house of every thief (Zechariah 5:1-4) and the money they have stolen carries the curse of poverty?
The writer works for Uganda Media Centre.
Thank you Josepha for the article. Syndicated corruption is difficult to fight, but giving up is not an option. Writing an article like yours to create awareness is definitely a humble attempt.
Accountants are executors/implementers of fraud/corruption, and not initiators. What would an accountant do when given “instructions from above (P/S or Minister in central govt)” to process dubious transactions? Resigning would be the only option, but how many are ready to do that? Auditors at lower to mid-levels, actually share the loot once they discover fraud. They might even share the loot with their bosses in order to secure or maintain deployment in “lucrative” MDAs. Like you put it, not every accountant/auditor is corrupt. Accountants/Auditors lack professional independence.
To add to yours, I suggest the following:
1. Stringent punitive measures for the corrupt. Recover stolen money and jail them. ICPAU, some of your members are corrupt. Cancel professional certificates/licenses of the corrupt. Every profession should reign in on their members, including the judiciary.
2. Cultural renaissance. Legal frameworks and anti-corruption institutions are irrelevant when people have lost their consciences and minds. When I was young, we used to graze cattle. We would be very hungry for many hours, but never once did we steal peoples’ peanuts/groundnuts, cassava, potatoes etc in gardens near grazing areas. Theft was very stigmatizing. Today, the story is different. Children start stealing from villages or see their parents do it in urban areas. Like you put it, society should not praise but vilify the corrupt. I know, easier said than done, when the corrupt pretend to “give back” to society with laughable things, and the poor accept those “gifts”.
3. People with corrupt tendencies should not access top levels of leadership.
4. Faith/Spiritual leaders have a big role to play. Everyone knows what they should do.
Readers, please don’t laugh at my suggestions. I want to hear yours too.
Finally, corrupt people poison the whole society. It takes courage to be honest in a corrupt society. Psalm 73:3 (NKJV) puts it this way, “For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw prosperity of the wicked”.