The crude, dark and violent acts by the police, the army, and sponsored Ghetto Youths that swept through Gulu City, the heartland and pride of Acholi land, must be condemned.
This planned violence targeted the branch offices, rally venue, campaign trail, the person, and supporters of National Unity Platform (NUP) party presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, also known as Bobi Wine.
There is irrefutable evidence that these Ghetto Youths thugs, who are notorious for assaults, thefts, violent robberies, and house break-ins, were formed earlier this year to solicit support for the NRM presidential candidate and party flag bearers in Acholi, especially in Gulu City.
We condemn the exploitation of these war-wretched young men and women and turning them into machines of political violence. Even worse is drafting them to mete out crude, dark and violent acts against NRM party opponents, who may not even be their enemies.
This merciless manipulation is akin to herding these Acholi youths into a kraal like mindless cows, taming and conditioning them to act on the whims of their herdsmen. This is a shameless humiliation of an occupied and dispossessed people coming out of a brutal and destructive 20 years of war.
First, the violence reinforces the old label that our oppressors coined to colour the Acholi and wider Northern Uganda as tribal, crude, dark-hearted, and violent people.
Second, their primitive beatings of Bobi Wine and supporters in Gulu, was to turn the Acholi against the rest of Ugandans, especially the Baganda. For those who don’t know, the undercurrents were to feed into an old, and often manipulative and divisive narrative of hatred and clash between Buganda and the North, especially the Acholi.
Sadly, three days since the dark acts, no Acholi leader has condemned this dim act, be they the often-noisy but spineless NRM from the region, cultural, or opinion leaders. The only bold exception was Rev Fr Eric Uma of Holy Rosary Parish in Gulu.
The blunt and candid warning by Fr Uma must ring in all our hearts. We agree with him that Our children have been groomed and forced into breaking shops, assaulting innocent people who had gone to listen to an alternative political message of Presidential candidate Bobi Wine, while the army and police looked on.
Indeed, what the youths were coerced to do was being herded and treated like cows and by inference that our life, thinking, and actions as Acholi must be dictated by our oppressors and we follow like cows being driven to a watering hole, pasture, and kraal or even slaughter house.
We join the Fr Uma to warn that the leadership of the police and army in Acholi must stop wedging a rift and pitting the Acholi against other tribes. Bobi Wine campaigned in President Museveni’s backyard in Western Uganda, but no big guns and battle wagons or mambas were deployed against him; why in Acholi?
As Electoral Commission chairperson Justice Byabakama Mugenyi warned in the wake of the violence, a duly nominated Presidential candidate as Bobi Wine is, is free to traverse any part of Uganda to campaign, provided he is acting within the law and guidelines issued by the EC.
Let’s reject the misuse of our people and youths for selfish political gains and regime survival.
It’s tragic that after 40 years of the so-called sane governance by the NRM, its politico-military men are using our youths to attack fans, rampage and ransack shops of people associated with Bobi Wine in Gulu City.
Let’s heed the clarion call by Fr Uma to rise up and reject these dark deeds. Why must we keep quiet when atrocious deeds are committed in our name?
The treatment of Bobi Wine in Acholi is unparallel across Uganda. Why do military and police commanders who come from outside Acholi come here to pit us against other tribes? Must all dark deeds orchestrated by ill-intentioned others always be pinned on the Acholi?
This dark reputation is akin to the twisted narrative by the NRA bush war fighters who pinned on the Acholi all the killings during the war in Luweero Triangle in the 1980s. They made it look like the Acholi were the only tribe that constituted the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA). But we got to know better years after that some bandits donned UNLA uniforms to commit atrocities to infuriate the population.
It should be now that we question these agendas of always tagging to the Acholi all the damnable acts. Why must we accept to be sent on evil errands? Why must our youths record themselves in broad daylight and vow to kill with impunity those opposed to the perpetual survival of the NRM party?
Must we be the sacrificial lambs to protect the gains that others have bountifully reaped?
As Fr Uma warned, the violence against Bobi Wine undermines all the values for which Mr Museveni jumped into the bushes of Luweero to fight the Milton Obote II regime, on claims of electoral violence, malpractices and rigging.
In comparison, the electoral violence in Gulu on Saturday outpaces all that Museveni protested against. In this regard, President Museveni must take note that such gross impunity and savage violence in his name will undermine his electoral chances in Acholi. They have depicted his NRM government as repressive and may only win the minds and vote by violence.
The violence has forced the people of Acholi to ask several questions, as Fr Uma, pointed out.
Can’t the Acholi exercise their own electoral choices? Must the army and armoured vehicles be ferried into Gulu to intimidate and force our political choices? Who gives the NRM the power to declare the Acholi their property and not God’s own creation with rational mind to make informed political choices?
We challenge our Acholi sons and daughters who have fallen heels over head to squeeze themselves into the NRM gravy train to come out and pronounce themselves on this misuse of our youths and tarnishing the name of our community.
Acholi is far better than what the NRM converts, collaborators and weak-kneed opportunists would want to paint us to be. That is not what the Acholi are.
We are a proud and decent people.
Unity is our strength.