Uganda is nation well-known for “creative” reporting. Creative in a sense that official statistics rather than depicting correct scenarios, often serve to meet egoistic (for individuals), or “revolutionary” motives (for government). That’s why senior army officers have been implicated in ghost soldier scandals, which despite imposing an enormous cost on human life and the national economy, have benefited commanding officers at a colossal scale. Most Ugandans must have heard that government failed to defeat the insurgency in the north because there simply weren’t enough fighting forces on ground. Some commanders in charge had among other things inflated the number of officers and men under their charge to make a financial kill.
The extent of these ghost soldier scandals first came into public domain when it was revealed that out-numbered UPDF soldiers guarding 20,000 capacity camps for IDPs in the North were running away without a fight, upon the advance of LRA rebels. Poor souls, those soldiers would always be court-marshaled and convicted for cowardice!
With regard to education, ghost enrollments have been discovered in Universal Primary Education (UPE) Schools. The reported population of the first generation of UPE products could have been inflated by up to 75%, although government preferred to attribute the difference to drop-outs along the P1 – P7 continuum. For obvious reasons, District Local Governments maintain ghost workers on their pay-roll until some “nosy” characters find out.
Even the HIV/AIDS prevalence statistics seem to have magically dropped, from 30% in the early 1990s to about 6% to date. On the other hand, the national economic growth rate that has averaged more than 6% over much of the 20 years of NRM rule is too good for a country whose 75% of its population in some regions (e.g the north) lives under abject poverty!
Several public procurements have been inflated (such as the junk helicopter saga) while others have involved fictitious deals, otherwise known as “air” purchases. In fact, “creative reporting has been so ably institutionalized that some local artists have composed hit songs, such as the “Kiwani” fame.
But of all the controversies relating to official statistics, none catches my imagination like the national population size which is currently projected at 30 million-plus. Who ever has traveled widely around the country will testify that it’s all bush and abyss around the country side. Except the Kigezi, Rwenzori, and some parts of Mt. Elgon highlands, it’s evident that there are scanty human populations in much of the country side – except in townships. Where is that 30 million-plus Ugandans living?
This quandary is augmented by statistics from religious houses: if you visited the Province of the Church of Uganda at Namirembe, you would be informed that there are about 7.5 million protestant Christians in Uganda. Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala would easily confirm that he has nearly 9 million Catholics in his flock. There are also 2 million Pentecostals, roughly 2-3 million Moslems, and not more than 0.5 million Pagans. That would constitute roughly 21-22 million Ugandans. How then, do we account for the remaining 8-9 million-plus people? They all can not possibly be living in the diaspora!
For a country which depends on census information to allocate resources, it would not be strange for Local Governments to inflate the number of their residents – much in the same way that army commanders inflate the number of officers and men under their charge. Iam actually aware of some Local Government (Rwamucucu Sub County, Kabale district) which attempted to have their 2001 population figures revised upwards by UBOS because the figures were lower than what local leaders had expected.
On the other hand, it is possible that the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) – the body charged with collecting, analyzing and relaying statistics on various parameters, including human population, “creatively” projects figures based on fictitious population growth rates to give us junk population statistics.
I do not know whether UBOS is subject to any quality assurance oversight, but the country would do better with an independent audit of census statistics, and indeed all other information that UBOS has released. Until there is such audit, I will remain reluctant to believe that there are actually 30 million-plus of us, living in Uganda!
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