Mr Nicholas Sengoba
My memory of the very first time I was counted in the 1980 census is quite vivid. Uganda was crawling out of the 1979 war that sent Idi Amin Dada with his band of hoodlums, packing.
The looting that followed had meant a breakdown in most public service infrastructure. Then there was the insecurity and disorganisation of the UNLF governments of Prof Yusuf Kironde Lule and Godfrey Lukongwa Binaisa.
I remember Radio Uganda, the only broadcaster then, publicising the census widely in all languages. There were also many songs and jingles by local musicians played all over the radio and on UTV, the only television station.
The government bought 404 pickups that had the census logos and were used to coordinate the exercise.
My elder brother Norman Ddumba Sengoba was an enumerator. Those were the ‘analogue days’ where the details were recorded in a big long counter book.
I felt so important when Norman allowed me to carry one of the books to a home where I witnessed him doing his thing. As we moved to the next, he lit a cigarette and smoked; something which was forbidden at home. He gave me a ‘Big G’ bubble gum and had one himself - to freshen things up. He then sent me home. For obvious reasons, I never told anyone about his puffing moment.
Like today, Norman and many of the enumerators complained of delayed payment of their dues for the work they did. Unlike today, there were no boda bodas for easy and quick movement or even fancy reflector jackets for branding and identification. One knocked on a door, asked questions, recorded, and then wrote some code on the door to indicate that the home had been covered, and left. You did not have mobile phones or walkie-talkies for coordination. Otherwise the whole matter seemed like a simple and straightforward exercise. Maybe because you had a smaller population of about 13.28 million people and the enumerators asked a few questions, but then Uganda also had a limited resource envelope as the GDP stood at about $1.3 billion.
Last week, in Uganda whose GDP is now over $45 billion with a higher population of more than 45 million people, better transport, in a digital environment with advances in ICT, years of peace and stability, more people with a school education etc, the 11th National Census kicked off.
Expectations were extremely high in the countdown to the 2024 National Housing and Population Census which as you read, enters its fifth day.
That there would be roadblocks to ensure that those in transit are not left out. Prison time awaited those who dodged the exercise. The ones at work would be met there and included. Because of the importance of the exercise for national planning, we had a public holiday for emphasis. You had the feeling that there was an oversupply of enthusiastic enumerators waiting to get rolling with gusto.
Just imagine the anti-climax when news from all over the place had it that the gadgets were not working properly. Others claimed they had no data. For some, it was the enduring Ugandan challenge of fighting for money and allowances. Then UBOS even claimed that ‘fake enumerators’ had infiltrated the exercise and were masquerading in the process, causing confusion in a crucial matter that set the taxpayer behind by Shs333 billion.
I have never pretended to be a mathematician of any reputation - not even a bad one. But I can safely say that counting people in a census is a basic thing. It is not a complex mathematical process which requires strict adherence to the dictatorial tenets of the Pythagoras theorem or whatever. Where the ‘husband squared’ plus ‘wife squared’ is equal to ‘X squared’ which is the number of children in the home. So the enumerator must do these calculations to get the number of people in a household. It is a 1 + 1 + 1 issue. The rest is the elementary English of ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
The question is, what in Uganda is sacred and immune from this casual, haplessness that at great expense, painfully delivers mediocre processes and probably outcomes?
Why is it that with exponential progress in most of the indicators from revenue collection to financial management systems to the critical mass of the trained workforce, the state of Uganda fails miserably even in its basic duties? How come in the so-called bad old days of the 70s and 80s Uganda could offer free university education and public schools produced very good students only to be replaced by high tuition, private institutions many of which are owned by government officials and policymakers? In those days it was prudent to be treated in a public health facility, unlike today where you have to go to expensive private hospitals, many run by the same people who work in public hospitals.
The only things sacred are those that are shielded from the corruption that shrinks the State. Unfortunately, the cancer of corruption just keeps growing and eating away at the State. Anything that involves procurement is hijacked by individuals who get the most out of it by delivering the least to the public while charging exorbitantly.
The army of those who appreciate the situation of state failure grows slowly but steadily whenever they need the state personally but it fails them. Such are the days you find that getting justice in a court of law or help from the police is not a straightforward matter. When you find as a taxpayer that public hospitals can be a death trap if you have no money to pay or move to a private facility is when most of us wake up to this reality.
Then most of the people who work in the public sector suspect that someone above them is eating so they also insist on getting something before they work or deliver. The citizen who is the end user suffers most but also the whole state infrastructure cracks, crumbles and eventually breaks down.
That is how a serious matter like the census encounters huge problems that may compromise the outcome.
But there is hope. There was a moving clip of young enumerators who said they were using their own data to do census work. This means there are still people who care.
The fact that people are complaining about the shortcomings in the census system and are disappointed means they still have hope in the State for they say that he who expects nothing will never be disappointed. It would be worrying if they simply kept quiet as that would indicate cynicism and numbness which is a recipe for disaster.
Twitter: @nsengoba
