President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni talked to young leaders and told them not to focus too much on politics that divides people.
While officiating at the National Youth Council leaders meeting at State House-Entebbe on Thursday, the president said that being a leader isn’t forever, and it’s not good to only think about being a leader all the time. He warned against becoming professional leaders who believe they cannot survive without it.
“I also caution the youth leaders against being taken up by leadership, sectarianism and politics of identity. Leadership is not a permanent job and they should not fall into the trap of being “professional” leaders who think that without leadership, they will die.” he said
Museveni compared Uganda to other African countries that are facing problems because they didn’t understand their issues well. He said Uganda has been successful because they focused on solving people’s problems instead of fighting about things like tribes or religions.
“Politics is like medicine, if you don’t get the correct diagnosis, the patient will die. That is what is happening in those countries. The NRM here had a correct diagnosis. Some, of your elders, were telling our people about tribes, and religion. For us, we said, that is a misdiagnosis. Our solution was to solve people’s problems irrespective of their tribes or religions. That’s how we differed from those groups which emphasized politics of identity, for us we emphasized interests.”
He also told the young leaders to work on making money in different ways, like farming, making things, services, and technology. He said these things can help them and their country do better.
“All youth should get involved in wealth creation because many of the problems I have seen in the last more than 70 years are normally among children who didn’t have wealth creation as part of their culture, it’s very dangerous,” Museveni said.
He encouraged the young leaders to use government programs like emyooga, youth livelihood among others to grow themselves and their projects. The leaders led by their chairperson, Jacob Eyeru thanked Museveni for his good leadership and asked for more support.
“The areas of wealth creation are known. I have always talked about this. One is commercial agriculture and I’m glad that many of you are talking about that. You want to be a model farmer; you want me to help you. The next sector is manufacturing or processing. I was glad to hear somebody from Busoga talking about maize milling because when you talk about it, it means you have already gone to manufacturing. And here you can join as groups. The third area is services like transport, and hospitality and the fourth sector is ICT,” he said.
He explained that even the National Resistance Army (NRA) was able to fight and win the protracted war because they had a very strong base of wealth creation.
This meeting happens ahead of the International Youth Day and had the Minister of State for Youth and Children Affairs, Sarah Nyirabashitsi Mateke, there too.
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