Betty Nambooze Bakireke speaks out

It’s obvious that of recent here in social media and through formal media houses especially in the Luganda state-owned daily Bukedde something is cooking against Bakireke Nambooze Betty as a person, activist, and member of Parliament. Of course, you attack Nambooze because you want to weaken her side!se43

Over the years, Bukedde has been used to fight me majorly because I’m a Buganda-based politician who, by and large, enjoys reasonable influence in the area…The oppressor plus patterners in crime see Bukedde as the best communication outfit to malign those opposed to them… I’m here to announce the already noticable…that my tormentors are now back at it!

In the past few days alone, Bukedde has been used to generate stories that draw a wedge among us as members of NUP, as people coming from this region and as forces of change.

The other day, they came with a shouting headline, ” Bobi wine akyukidde Nambooze,” to read through only to find that there was no such story in the body!

The following day they returned with another seemingly sober headline ” Nambooze ayogedde ku biri mu NUP” but inside the story, Nambooze hadn’t been anywhere to talk about NUP…no quote, no source, no nothing. That is Bukedde for you. Two thousand shillings wasted; kitalo!

It’s bad for a person to concoct even a piece on the readers’ opinion page but for a senior media house to spin and flame up a lead- story not once but throughout the week is obscene, to say the least, an absurdity, shameful and evil!

I now wait for more headlines…bitabuuse, byonoonese, abotodde ebyaama, akaladde! In addition these fake reports are being backed up by hopeless reports of bloggers on social media with another setup against Mengo.

To spice this up is the ” Bwaniika- Nrm cadre fair-tale, off to the moon medical favors the regime awarded me”. This was designed to send me on the defensive as I battle the junta’s appeal to hypocrisy against me. Call it blackmail…I refused! For once I.left it to you, Ugandans.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the battle that set up.against us is not mean by any standard. Let’s go through the prospects…..Is there a looming reshuffle on the opposition side ? Is it for red herring to divert people, especially those from Buganda, from asking questions or demanding answers? Or is it the big succession, transitional-politics of Uganda ?

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, yet this is too loud to be nothing!

The feeling now among the regime propagandists is that they have been able to confuse and create a gullible media and information consumer society in Uganda. After many years of engineering, falsification, framing, distortion, and outright telling of lies, the dogs have gone to the media in Uganda!

The epitome of this bad press is now exhibited by through its local versions, more so the Luganda dairy Bukedde and her sister media organizations. It’s indeed sad that William Pike and many great journalists of our times worked tirelessly only to build a media that is increasingly working to stupidify society!

Not even radio has been spared. Growing up, it was enough to say that you heard this or that over the radio, you saw it on TV, or read it in a newspaper for an item to be believed as gospel truth. Gone are those days! Media organizations now tell lies with ease and impunity. The worst scenario is that the dictatorship has found such a press handy!

We are writting very bad history…the generations to come will hold us in contempt on learning that during our time,media houses in the country did successfully team up with the junta to facilitate dictatorship, instead of being neutral players in the promotion of democracy, constitutionalism, and the rule of the law.

The only consolation today is that we still have a handful of journalists who individually remain a faint voice of reason in newsrooms plus the new opening of citizen journalism through social media. Yet we all know that this group is also under siege.

Worryingly it is now becoming acceptable in Ugandan politics, to use media houses and even individuals to spin stories as a propaganda mechanism achieved through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to influence public opinion about opposition political organizations or public figures, influencers, or top activists.

Such spin often entails the use of disingenuous, deceptive, and manipulative tactics against the opposition, and as indicated above, this has created almost gullible media consumers. What is to become of Mother Uganda? A country can’t be different from the information and knowledge it gets fed on…imagine the level at which we are as Uganda after being served on deception, foolerly, outright lies and harmful propaganda for fourty years!

Let’s get to do something starting with ourselves…break the chain by discarding and refusing to consume rubbish for news!