The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
BIRTHDAY REFLECTIONS | YOWERI KAGUTA MUSEVENI | I want to thank the 8 million well-wishers that sent me congratulations on my 82nd birthday on the 15th of September, 2026.
Those well-wishes and God’s blessings will push me and Maama for another just 18 years to reach 100 years of age and for Maama to reach 96 years. In those remaining years, I appeal to the Africans, if they want to avoid future calamity, to work on the 3 historical missions not yet attained.
These are: prosperity for the Africans through integrating the African common market to help the wealth creators expand; strategic security against all threats through the political integration of the continent where possible, such as is the case with the East African Federation; in all this using undugu (the brotherhood) of the four linguistic groups of the 1.5bn Africans- the Niger-Congo (the Bantu and Kwa), the Nilo-Saharan (Cushitic, Nilotic, etc.), the Afro-Asiatic (Arabic, Tigrinya, Amhara) and the Khoisan.
It is the fulfilment of these historical missions that will guarantee our prosperity and strategic security.
In the meantime, some Kenya media people decided, recently, to put pilipili (red pepper) in what I said recently when I was laying the foundation stone of the 320 million litres oil storage centre at Buyala.
The real story is that when we were fighting Idi Amin, among other things, we used to say that he had destroyed governance in Uganda by putting abatasoma (the ones that did not go to school) in charge of running the affairs of the country. Indeed, when we defeated Idi Amin, we put back the civil servants in charge of running the administration of the country. It was much later that we discovered that those civil servants (PS, Commissioners, etc.) were ruining the country.
In, for instance, the matter of purchasing petroleum products for the country – a whole country, Uganda – I did not know that these wonderful people were buying those products through middlemen in Kenya by tendering to those middlemen. It was a Kenyan Senator called Jirongo who told me this around 2019. I immediately tasked the then Minister Irene Muloni to sort out that mess.
Nevertheless, nothing happened until 2023, when we linked up with a group known as Vitol that has refineries in different parts of the world and are also bulk suppliers.
Our initial agreement with them on the 18th of August 2023, provided that we buy per metric tonne as follows:
Diesel: Old price—USD 118 New price—USD 83
Petrol: Old Price—USD 97.5 New Price—USD 61.5
Aviation fuel: Old price—USD 114.25 New price—USD 79.25
I want to thank H.E Ruto because he prevailed over some actors in Kenya who were trying to resist. That is how we got our new arrangement, and the Kenyan government allows us to pump our products through the Kenyan oil pipeline, in which the Kenyan government allowed us to have shares of 20.15%.
We are very happy with the Kenya Government of President Ruto on this matter.
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Yoweri K Museveni President of the Republic of Uganda
