By Natukunda B. Innocent
Uganda today is awash with grief, with more tears flowing from road accidents than from any other single cause of death outside disease. Whether in dusty rural paths or on the tarmacked highways, blood is spilled with alarming frequency.
What is most disturbing is that the victims are not only the poor who must navigate chaotic transport on boda bodas or aging taxis, but also the affluent whose wealth offers no protection against poorly constructed roads and fatal negligence. In 2024 alone, Uganda registered 25,107 road crashes, an increase of 6.4% from the previous year. These crashes resulted in 4,434 deaths and left 25,808 injured or permanently maimed. That, you may say, is just a number. But to the families affected, each statistic is a name, a life, a dream shattered.
And yet, how did we get here? You might assume it’s reckless drivers, mechanical failures, or just fate. But pause and look deeper, and you will begin to notice a common thread binding all these tragedies: corruption. Yes, corruption—the silent monster that has made its home in the foundation of our roads, in the very bricks of our nation’s infrastructure. It is corruption that ensures a bridge collapses a year after completion. It is corruption that allows unqualified contractors to be awarded billion-shilling projects. It is corruption that inflates road budgets threefold while delivering work that can’t survive a single rainy season. Shall we continue to point fingers at boda boda riders when roads have no markings, no lighting, no pedestrian lanes, and no drainage?
This is no baseless cry. The facts speak clearly. Between 2009 and 2016, Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) received Shs9 trillion to complete 5,147 kilometers of roads. By the end of that cycle, only 1,500 kilometers had been constructed, and Shs4 trillion was unaccounted for. Ask any Ugandan where that money went, and they will tell you with quiet certainty—it was stolen. But if you ask who stole it, the air will fall silent. For in Uganda, thieves are protected not punished. Especially if they kneel before the throne of life presidency.
The cost of building roads in Uganda is another tell-tale sign. The Entebbe Expressway, stretching only 51 kilometers, swallowed $476 million—roughly $9.3 million per kilometer. And yet Kenya built the Thika Superhighway, 50 kilometers long, at $7 million per kilometer. Rwanda averages $330,000 per kilometer. Uganda, somehow, spends three times that—often on narrower, poorly surfaced roads. Should we pretend this is due to terrain or inflation? Or shall we admit the obvious—that the extra billions are lining the pockets of politicians and contractors who share deals like war loot?
The trend in deaths from road accidents confirms our failure. In 2018, we recorded 12,805 crashes. In 2019, 13,244. By 2020, it had reached 14,690. 2021 brought 17,443, and 2022, 20,394. In 2023, the number hit 23,600 and now in 2024, we’re at 25,107. These numbers are rising steadily, year by year. If nothing changes, we will be crossing 30,000 road crashes annually within the next three years. Are we going to sit back and wait until road carnage outpaces malaria as a national killer?
But the question remains—why isn’t anything being done? Why do the same firms with a record of shoddy work continue to win contracts? Why do ministers implicated in corruption scandals continue to serve, and worse, get promoted? Because the monster we fight isn’t just corruption—it is political corruption, carefully protected by a regime obsessed not with national safety, but with political survival. Life presidency is the order of the day, and anything that threatens that ambition must be dismissed—even if it’s the call for cleaner roads, better hospitals, or free elections.
This is why high-profile scandals go unresolved. The Temangalo land scandal. The Global Fund embezzlement. The ghost health centers and the lost pension billions. All exposed, all proven, and yet none punished. Why? Because the implicated names serve the machinery of power. As long as they pledge loyalty to the president’s long reign, they are untouchable. They may kill Ugandans through negligence, but they are politically safe. And so the monster grows stronger.
The cost of this impunity is not just measured in human life but in national dignity. Who will invest in a country where a kilometer of road costs $1 million but falls apart in two years? Who will trust a government that spends more on military convoys and political donations than on school roofs and hospital beds? Uganda is bleeding, not just from wounds caused by reckless drivers but from the rot of governance that puts politics before people. As the elite flee to private jets and armored cars, the ordinary Ugandan is left to navigate death traps with no option but prayer.
Meanwhile, those who raise their voices are silenced. Activists are jailed. Journalists are intimidated. Whistleblowers are fired. But even under this repression, brave citizens continue to resist. Civil society and social media campaigns like #UgandaParliamentExhibition have exposed the excesses of MPs and government agencies. Though the government’s instinct is to shut them down, these voices represent the conscience of a wounded nation.
Uganda is at a tipping point. We can either continue in this trajectory—where road accidents, poor workmanship, and corruption become normalized—or we can choose a different path. A path where leaders are accountable, budgets are audited, roads are inspected, and lives are valued. The monster that lives in our house must be exorcised—not tomorrow, not in the next manifesto, but now. Because if we don’t act, the monster will not just remain in the house—it will burn it down, brick by brick, soul by soul.
This article is not just a condemnation—it is a cry from the heart of a citizen who believes Uganda can be better. A Uganda where roads connect life instead of delivering death. A Uganda where public service is honorable, not a code word for looting. A Uganda where leadership means protection, not plunder.
And so I say this, with all the strength of conviction: let us rise. Let us speak. Let us demand that the road to our future not be paved with blood and betrayal. Let it be built on truth, justice, and the courage to confront the monster in our midst.
But perhaps the most tragic dimension of this national decay is the pain of the ordinary Ugandan—the voter, the taxpayer, the everyday citizen—who suffers in silence. This is the person who wakes up at dawn to board a boda boda to the market, who clutches their rosary or Bible on a minibus hoping to reach home safely, who waves at campaign vehicles every five years with hope in their eyes, never knowing that the very leaders they vote for are the architects of their suffering.
They pay taxes religiously, through mobile money, fuel, food items, and every transaction they make. Yet, they cannot trace how this money benefits their community. A voter from Kyenjojo, Gulu, Bugiri, or Rubirizi will mourn the same way over a fatal accident, but rarely will they connect the broken bridge, the narrow road, the absent ambulance, to the policy decisions made in Kampala. They have been conditioned to separate governance from survival. And so, when death comes in the form of an overturned truck or a speeding bus that veered off a pothole-laden road, they weep for fate—not failed leadership.
This mental disconnect is not accidental. It is engineered by a political class that thrives on disempowerment. Leaders invest more in handouts and slogans than in educating citizens about their rights. They use ethnicity, religion, and patronage to distract from the core questions: Why is our road impassable? Where did the budget go? Who owns that construction company? Why is that official still in office after mismanaging funds?
Meanwhile, the elites ride in bulletproof SUVs. Their families are never seen on public buses or boda bodas. When they fall sick, they are flown to Nairobi, India, or Europe. When roads are impassable, they use helicopters. They do not know the taste of roadside dust or the fear of crossing a narrow bridge with no guardrails. To them, potholes are political talking points, not daily death traps. Their children study abroad while local schools collapse. They have turned public office into a gated community—safe, aloof, and numb to the cries outside.
This is why the taxpayer suffers twice. First, they fund the projects that are never completed. Then they pay again—with their lives, their limbs, or their loved ones—when those projects fail. They vote every five years, hoping for change, but are given speeches instead of solutions. They are blamed for being reckless on the roads, yet they were never given a safe road to begin with. The state turns its back on them, except when it needs another vote, another tax, or another excuse.
But this pain is not passive. It breeds quiet resentment. The voter may not protest on the streets, but they talk in whispers, they curse in traffic jams, they pray against their leaders in churches and mosques. They are watching. And when the time comes, they will rise—not with stones, but with questions. They will ask: How did we become a nation where a car is safer than a hospital? Where a flight is more reliable than a road? Where death is expected every time one travels past their village?
The irony is that the voter is told to be patient, to trust the process, to understand that development takes time. But how much time is enough when people are dying? How many children must become orphans before the government prioritizes safe infrastructure? How many billions must be stolen before someone is jailed, not transferred? The voter is not stupid—they are simply surviving. But when survival becomes suffering, history teaches us that silence does not last forever.
Let us remember, every broken road is a broken promise. Every corrupt deal is a betrayal. And every funeral caused by poor infrastructure is not just a family tragedy—it is a national indictment. Until the pain of the voter is acknowledged and addressed, no amount of propaganda will erase the blood on our roads.
Uganda does not lack resources—it lacks accountability. It does not lack engineers—it lacks integrity. And it certainly does not lack pain. What it needs is a collective awakening, where the voter, the taxpayer, the ordinary citizen realizes that bad governance is not just about elections—it is about life and death. And when that realization spreads, the monster in our house will finally have a name. And when it has a name, it can be fought. And when it is fought, it can be defeated. The writer is a founder Team Leader of Tooro NUP coordinators and mobilisers bnatukundainno@gmail.com. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com.
