IGG finally touches ‘untouchables’ in Uganda’s sports sector

By Emmanuel Sekago

Kampala – Thank you Inspector General of Government for taking the time to critically analyze the netball sports problems, and for ensuring that sanity comes back in sports. You’re such a brilliant leader and as stakeholders we are so grateful for your passion, dedication, and professionalism.

I’m blown away by your integrity and all the hard work you did on netball. We will always be grateful for all of your efforts for digging deep into the core of Uganda sports problems.

The Uganda sports problems have been, and are generated by the officials at the helm of the sector who had turned to be untouchables.

We all know that the National Council of Sports (NCS) is a statutory organ whose establishment, status and powers are enshrined under The NCS Act of 1964, to among other things; Develop, promote and control sports activities in Uganda on behalf of government.

The NCS mandate among others include; Develop and promote all forms of sport on national basis, in conjunction with voluntary amateur sports bodies, and also providing training and the required staff, encourage and facilitate cooperation among the various national sports associations.

VISION:

The vision of National Council of Sports is: “To provide an enabling environment for the investment in and promotion of sports in Uganda.”

MISSION:

The overall mission is: “Maximizing opportunities for all Ugandans to participate and excel in Sports”

Now, looking at the “Vision”, the National Council of Sports Uganda sports created more harm to sports development than good.

Many times national teams of different sports disciplines have failed to represent the country because of less or no funding from the National Council of Sports to extent of others putting the nation to shame before the world an example was the basketball national team the Silverbacks that was locked in an hotel in Rwanda due to failure to clear the bills and it needed first son Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba to bail them out.

It should be noted that after Uganda putting up a good show in the 2022 Commonwealth games in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Instead of players heading to games with allowances paid in time as it’s supposed to be, they instead received their allowances on return but after media outbursts.

This is not because the government has been not allocating funds for the activities but the responsible authorities have been not doing their mandate right and ended up mismanaging funds and hence the suffering of the athletes and the sports federations.

Another case study, the national netball team made wonders in the Fast Five tournament held in New Zealand where they beat the world’s number one in Australia, but again they received no allowances.

Thanks to the office of the IGG who picked interest in the matter of the sports sector, the dirt in the sector, especially at the National Council of Sports was exposed. The case in point is that of Uganda Netball Federation whose funds were withheld by NCS over alleged accountability issues, but the IGG on Thursday finally directed it (NCS) to transfer the Federation’s funds within seven days.

Once this matter gets resolved to its last dot, IGG Betty Olive Namisango Kamya and her deputy, Dr. Patricia Achan Okiria will go down in history books of heroes who saved the sports sector and confronted the corrupt individuals.

The author is a seasoned investigative sports journalist with a vast experience that spans over 10 years.