By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

More by this Author

Last week was one for statistics in Uganda. The daily ones for Covid-19 updates we are used to and no longer pay attention to them.

For what difference does it make if the dead are 156 or 157, especially when the family of the deceased disputes the official classification of their person who has been bedridden for years as a coronavirus victim?

But there were many other statistics that caught our attention because they were rather disturbing. The bankers who were rattled by a court ruling against one of their own for lending to a ‘defaulter’ without the central bank’s (Bank of Uganda) permission to lend funds from outside without a licence to do so. The bankers tried to scare us with voluminous statistics of the loans that they might not be able to recover because they fall under the same category.

The Ministry for Gender released statistics for violence against children during the Covid-19 lockdown and they were simply scary. For patriotic reasons, I will not quote them here, especially the number of fathers said to have inflicted sexual violence on their minors — as if it is less shocking even if the violated were thirty or sixty years!

One statistic that put everything in perspective was released by Butabika National Referral Hospital. This was on October 10, during the World Mental Health Day.

Butabika has in recent times been handling 500 patients annually. But this year, the facility has already logged 1,500 cases and still counting. A simple projection would give us 2,000 cases at year’s end, which is quadruple the annual average.

Mental illness is reflected in other statistics. Take the High Court case of the bank. It stems from the Bank of Uganda, whose role is to supervise the commercial banks, and we thought they do it closely.

Now when a bank customer’s business was doing badly and was fighting with his bankers in court, he challenged the legality of his loan. And there and behold! The bankers had omitted to secure certain licences to conduct specific activities in Uganda. That determined the outcome of the case.

And here we have a central bank that keeps blowing hot air about overseeing the banking sector closely to the extent of closing down seven banks in the past two to three decades, but they do not even know which bank is operating without specific licences.

When they were recently grilled by a parliamentary committee, it turned there were even no reports on the closed banks.

Let us skip the incest report from the Gender ministry since we would rather pretend that these things don’t happen. Let us move on to the statistics in housing. A big conference on housing recently told us of some million-plus deficit of housing units and said by 2030 the country would have a housing deficit of three million units.

The housing deficit actually casts doubt on the quadrupling of mental illness — it should be higher, maybe ten times more. Drive around Kampala day or night these days, from the city centre and around the suburbs. Hundreds of highrise apartments have come up – and they are empty. And there is a housing deficit, with a couple of million people lacking accommodation!

Why are billions being sunk into apartments that cannot be occupied when millions are officially unhoused? Doesn’t that reflect massive mental illness among those who are supposed and are paid to ensure there is some sense in the housing sector?

During the three months of total lockdown, those of us who by virtue of our work were permitted to drive day and night got a sense of what a ghost town can be. The fairly-tales you read and horror movies you watched do not come near the reality of a fully deserted city. Driving on a deserted road at night in a poorly lit city makes you scared of your own headlamps yet switching them off would intensify the eeriness.

Yes, since independence we have always had a minister in cabinet in charge of housing, for whom the nation expects progressive policies to increase the stock of affordable quality houses every year. But a Housing minister can serve for five years without causing the addition of one affordable housing unit in the whole country, but keep making lofty speeches at housing sector conferences.

We also recently had the annual police crime report that is full of statistics. But with many statistics from different sectors reflecting criminality and insanity, what do we need a police report on criminality for?

Joachim Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. Email: [email protected]