Makerere University Academic staffs have resolved that all student leaders should be taken to the National Leadership Institute for training and proposed that the services of NALI should be decentralized to all the regions in the country in order to have a big impact.
55 Professors, Associate Professors, Lecturers and Researchers from Makerere University received a political intellectual lecture from President Yoweri Museveni, after completing a 35-day Advanced Political Education and Leadership Training Course at NALI in Kyankwanzi District.
During the lecture at State House Entebbe on Thursday, the president commended the management of the National Leadership Institute (NALI) based in Kyankwanzi District for its support in politicizing and mentoring National Resistance Movement (NRM) supporters into intellectual cadres with discipline and political charisma.
The academic staff’s programme at Kyankwanzi covered several topics including philosophy, Pan-Africanism, Social Economic Transformation, Political Leadership, Financial Management Literacy and Military Skills.
President Museveni revealed that the NRM was launched from a peasantry intellectual way that mobilized for a new and modern army that destroyed the old one and built a progressive national cadreship.
“NRM has several tasks. It is challenged by lack of cadres to undertake the many national tasks. Politics is a gigantic subject covering a wide range of historic events that need to be studied,” he said, adding that the Movement must cause an immunization of the people against domination and marginalization. He noted that the mobilization of the population into commercial production will lead to progress.
While answering concerns about undermining of women, he said the way forward is to provide them with education and economic independence. He observed that girls must be strengthened through education and enabled to participate in a non-agricultural economy; citing the setting up of small and medium factories, hotels, shops and ICT facilities.
Mr. Museveni emphasized that the national budget should support production and not consumption such as increased salaries of public servants.
On the issue of lack of national language in Uganda, the President observed that English which is the only recognized language in the country as an official medium of communication does not reach all the people in the country. He, therefore, suggested that Kiswahili be used to unite big groups as it is a neutral language.
Professor Peter Baguma of the School of Psychology at Makerere University and leader of the delegation stressed the need to establish a think-tank at national level that should be employed for spearheading socio-economic transformation and planning for society. He proposed that the think tank should be housed at Makerere University.
The Director of NALI, Brigadier David Kasura Kyomukama said that by training a unique group drawn from a cross section of academia in political science was a rare occasion. He noted that the measure goes a long way in creating more chances to nurture more agents of political transformation in the country.