Dependency on western powers causing chaos in Africa – Museveni

Uganda’s president, Gen Yoweri Museveni, has disclosed that dependency on western powers is among the key factors causing chaos and insecurity in most African countries.

“Security of each country must be provided by its own people not by all these groups running around because the people are the ones who know what hurts them. If you are a good friend, you should always insist on self-sufficiency in security not dependency.

That is why Uganda is peaceful and I would like to really advise other Third-World people to stop dependency because there’s nobody who can know more than you how you can defend yourself. It is a big mistake. You may not have all the resources but the concept should be there and you have the nucleus,” the president said.

Museveni made the remarks Wednesday during the maiden graduation ceremony of the National Defence College- Uganda (NDC-U) in Buikwe District.

He also noted that for a country to be peaceful, it needs to have a national army with capable leadership.

“Now part of the instability which Uganda had after Independence was due to that problem of having no capable army leaders. A fellow like Idi Amin didn’t know anything. He was totally ignorant. So, they didn’t know the idea of loyalty to the Constitution; then they could not understand anything about running a country even when they took power.

So that was part of the problem. Therefore, right from our student days, we resolved that we must build an army of a new type and that is what we started doing. And when we were in Government, we developed capacity for the support arms by working with a number of other people initially Tanzanians, North Koreans and Russians,” the President asserted.

“This college, therefore, is an apex training centre where we shall be training our senior people mainly from the army but also from other sectors because here as a National Defence College, you are training people to be conversant with the National defence and security wholistically and strategically for the whole country. Not just the army but also other sectors like the economy, politics that make the army strong. Therefore, what we have achieved here is a result of our long journey of consciously building our capacity as Uganda,” he added.

You are fighters, fight

The president told the 18 senior UPDF officers who graduated in a postgraduate course of Security and Strategic Studies to train the people under their command because the army is first and foremost for fighting.

“Everybody in the army must be a fighter and a leader of fighters or support the fighter. We don’t want half- baked people anywhere. Training makes people brave. If I’m confident of my weapons, my skills, there’s nothing that I will fear.  And another thing, always check on the welfare of your soldiers to ensure that they have what they need,” he said.

The UPDF Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Wilson Mbadi, noted that every course has got a purpose and that whereas one might be good in fighting using weapons, one still needs to be backed up and grounded in strategic thought.