The Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) on Friday released the 2020 Uganda Certificate Of Education (UCE) results showing much better performance of Senior four students who sat for the exams last year despite of the covid season at an event presided over by the First Lady who also doubles as the Education minister Janet Kataha Museveni.

A total of 333,889 candidates registered for the 2020 UCE examinations from 3,935 centres. According to UNEB, 49.8 percent of the candidates were male and 50.1 percent female.

Prof. Mary Okwakol, by the director education standards, Dr. Kedrace Turyagyenda, candidature in previous examinations had been increasing between two to three per cent annually.

39,968 candidates passed in division one, 109,750 in division two, 191,178 in division three and 311,233 in division four. UNEB results show that 329,648 candidates were ungraded and as thus, cannot advance for A-level education. These candidates can either repeat S4 or join technical & vocational training institutions for skill-based opportunities.

According to the board, there was an overall improvement in performance in the large entry subjects like English, CRE, IRE, and History save for Geography, Chemistry and Biology.

Here is a list of the top 250 Schools according to their performance in the UCE exams.

By Hope Kalamira

Detectives at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (CID) in Kibuli have grilled former minister Hajji Abdul Nadduli’s son on charges of promoting sectarianism and inciting violence.

According to sources based at Kibuli, Jakana Nadduli, a son to Hajji Nadduli, the former Minister without portfolio in Museveni’s government, was grilled on Wednesday this week.

Sources said that Nadduli was accused of using Tamale Mirundi Online (TMO), a YouTube channel to commit the alleged offences.

Sources unveiled that Nadduli was grilled on statements he has been making accusing a one tribe of Banyarwanda of trying to grab Baganda land and using force to take over the country’s leadership.

He was also accused of being behind the group of people that announced president Museveni dead on social media.

Our efforts to reach Nadduli were futile because his known phone numbers were not going through.

By Sengooba Alirabaki

The comic in the absurdity of the ‘mailo akenda’ (9,000square miles) tale, lies in the attempt to hide the truth that the 9,000square miles was part of the land grabbing, it having been curved from the Kingdoms of Bunyoro, Ankole, Kooki in the 1900 Agreement which gifted to Buganda the counties of Buluri, Bugerere, Buyaga, Bugangasizi, Kabula, Mawogola, Kooki and part of Singo.

The right people therefore to lay claim on the ‘mailo akenda’ are the people of Bunyoro, Ankole, and Kooki. Happily, the 9,000square miles (akenda) is now part of the Country’s public land where customary tenants till freely, and other Ugandans hold leaseholds on which they labour for their personal and the country’s advancement.

Advancing the laughable ‘mailo akenda’ reasoning, resonates exactly with what happened in England after 1066 when William the Conqueror and his French Norman barons conquered England.

They immediately divided the land amongst themselves while the local owners were designated peasants who had no rights to their own land. The Normans formed the British aristocracy who continue to this day.

Those British landowning aristocrats who can trace their lineage to 1066 acquired that land in exactly the way the British colonialists gave out land in Uganda during the building of the Uganda colony. It was indeed a bribe, and a thank you for supporting the newly installed William the Conqueror as King of the new Kingdom of England. It is amazing to think that methods didn’t change in over 1000yrs. The British exported the idea to colonized Uganda.

The case of the Banyoro in the counties of Buyaga and Bugangaizi is slightly akin to that of the mediaeval England. In those two counties, 2995 square miles, were allotted by the colonialists to the collaborators. The Banyoro were deprived of their traditional rights in land and became mere tenants compelled to pay feudal dues to Baganda mailo landlords.

The Baganda in other areas who were not part of the collaborating group, worked for the newly created mailolanded aristocracy, just as the Banyoro were labouring for their Baganda chiefs.

All in all, at the end of the land allotment bonanza, land in what came to be known as Uganda’s Kingdom of the Province of Buganda, was shared almost equally between the leading chiefs, relatives and friends on one hand and the Uganda Protectorate on the other. Out of a population of close to one million people, only 3700 were allocated land and the rest remained landless.

They held bibanja at the mercy of both the newly created mailolanded aristocratic owners, and the Uganda Protectorate Government whose Crown land was really intended for alienation to non-Ugandans.

Poverty currently chewing Buganda is largely due to the fact that since the land bonanza of 1900, almost none of all the allocatees or their successors have exhibited any enterprise or industry.

They failed to turn their mailos into farms, or plantations. Instead, they became farmers of rent and sellers of land.

Many of them have sold their mailo to the last decimal. In this selling spree, the bibanja holders are left to the mercy of the land grabbers who routinely evict them.

In very many ways, the Buganda peasants have turned out worse off than peasants elsewhere in Uganda. This is due to the endurance of the customary tenure of land which has shielded them from the money bags of land grabbers with their insatiable appetite for land.

The eviction of peasants from their ‘bibanja’ has been leading to the growth of a floating population of landless ‘peasants’ with no industries to absorb them in our condition. Peasants do not become agricultural labourers either because no farms have been developed or when they are, the jobs are reserved for the boys from ‘home’. This floating population will swell the urban slums to bursting point and the social consequences are too frightening to contemplate.

The eviction of ‘muntu wa wansi’ (peasants) from his kibanja removes the only security he has been holding on since 1900.

The ownership of the ‘kibanja’ had over the years offered him the ultimate security. The ‘Muntu wa wansi’ (Peasants) in Uganda holds no life insurance policies. They do not put anything on the side in social security funds. They work until they drop dead.

There are a few lucky ones who manage to educate their children, who in turn support their parents when they begin to work but for most of them the only security is their bibanja.

When therefore President Museveni proclaims that the time has come to give ownership in perpetuity to peasants on their bibanja tenure, he has actually given to the people of Uganda their core security-securing their future in perpetuity.

Hon. Dr. Sam Mayanja

Minister of State for Lands

smayanja@kaa.co.ug

www.kaa.co.ug