BUJAGALI DAM: CIVIL SOCIETY-GOVERNMENT ALTERNATION OF ENGAGEMENT AND DISENGAGEMENT CONTINUES TO UNDERMINE “DEVELOPMENT”

 

 

F.C. Oweyegha-Afunaduula

Coordinator

Save Bujagali Crusade (SBC) &

Secretary

National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE)

afunaduula2000@yahoo.co.uk

www.afuna.o-f.com

24.6.2005

 

 

NAPE OCCASIONAL PAPER ON “BUJAGALI IN THE ENVIRONMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND ENERGY DEBATE”, NAPE/BUJAGALI-EDED-4/6-2005.

The Bujagali dam project, which was proposed in the late 1990s, has graduated as one of the most controversial dam projects in the world, according to a book by the title “ Corruption in Practice ” published in February 2005 by Transparency International, which rated it among the world's four most corrupt projects currently. According to Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2005) this book represents a mushrooming school of thought, which holds that it is corruption driving the Bujagali dam process and that, in fact, some top politicians [and bureaucrats] in Uganda and at the World Bank staked their reputations in the project process too deeply to admit that a corrupted project process cannot serve as a vehicle for development as it obviously lacks development effectiveness. However, the Government of Uganda, which is used to consciously or unconsciously going ahead with openly corrupted development processes, is unbothered and has repeatedly pronounced that Bujagali will be built using resources generated locally from within one of the most impoverished countries south of the Sahara .

 

While the World Bank and its investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) are no longer openly and faithfully speaking about the goodness, appropriateness or economic and development value of Bujagali dam, and many foreign credit institutions and the giant energy firm, the US AES Inc, unceremoniously withdrew from the dam project, the Uganda Government is unswerving in its political and policy commitment to a “no change stance” in its advocacy of and technoarrogance towards the project process. Accordingly, the government, unbothered by civil society concerns about the lack of development effectiveness in the Bujagali dam process right from the time of its conception, in April this year announced that it had selected the Aga Khan's Industrial Promotion Services (IPS) to build the Dam at Dumbbell Island 8 km from the Owen Falls Dam downstream of the river Nile.

 

According to government, it is “electricity loadshedding” and, therefore, not development effectiveness, which is driving its (government's) determination to have Bujagali dam built as soon as possible, ostensibly to solve the problem. By implication also loadshedding is driving and being used as the justification for the dam process itself. However, industrialization, poverty eradication and economic growth have also been individually and collectively used as justifications for the “violent development” of Bujagali. For that matter, anyone who has sounded caution has been quickly dismissed as anti-development and economic saboteur by none other than His Excellency the President of Uganda, General Yoweri Kaguta Museveni who, in his zeal to dam Bujagali falls, has christened environmentalists and environmental groups as “pseudo-environmental”.

 

In its March 22 2005 document titled “ Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development: Response to outstanding Bujagali Environmental Issues Raised by NAPE on February 28 2005” , Government maintains and recites without questioning the evaluation by Acres International that Bujagali dam is the least-cost dam of all the dams frequently mentioned in World Bank documents and in the Uganda Energy Master Plan of 1995 as candidates for construction on the Nile portion of Uganda. However, it is now well known that Bujagali dam is not the least-cost option because it does not seriously factor in costs due to losses in tourism, environmental quality, culture and spirituality as well as socio-economic and socio-political stability in the long-term, particularly of the Basoga who are listed in the Uganda Constitution 1995 as the 25 th Indigenous Community of Uganda.

 

Moreover, it has been reliably established that the cost of Bujagali dam was skewed to make it appear as if it is twice as cheap as Karuma Dam further downstream of the Nile . Karuma in fact is cheaper and, if built will not be environmentally, socially and culturally destructive. Even in terms of tourism, there will be virtually no destruction because the dam will not affect the Falls. Further the Karuma Dam's electricity will be cheaper.

 

Therefore, according to civil society active in the energy sector, the sexing up of data to disadvantage Karuma in favour of Bujagali, the official feigning of ignorance of the fact that Owen Falls Dam (Nalubaale) and Owen Falls Extension Dam (Kiira) have never promoted tourism and the perpetuation of the lie that when Bujagali is built Tourism will boom are the greatest indicators that the corruption of the Bujagali dam process is a deliberate behaviour of the proponents of the process.

Despite government determination to continue with the discredited Bujagali dam project, many issues remain unresolved. Even the World Bank's own transparency and accountability watchdogs -International Finance Corporation's (IFC's) Ombudsman and the Inspection Panel -found in 2001 and 2002 respectively that these issues are critical and require attention. They recommended that if the project were to have development effectiveness, they should not be ignored. Significantly, these issues remain at the core of the Civil Society action on Bujagali Dam. Unfortunately, they are being ignored and have been loosely explained away by Uganda 's Ministry of Energy in the above-mentioned document.

 

The issues, which civil society active in the energy sector has repeatedly and increasingly raised, include the following:

 

 

The World Bank's private investment arm, the IFC, was to be the major lender for the project, but pulled out after AES withdrew in August 2003 due to the unresolved controversies surrounding the project. The Bank has not indicated whether or not it will get involved this time.

 

Since the World Bank backed off from the project in 2002, the Ugandan government has proposed various funding mechanisms, from an infrastructure development bond to raiding the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) to pay for the dam. NSSF is a fund to which the country's workers contribute monthly towards their social security after they have retired from active service. Raiding NSSF is not extraordinary in Uganda because not very long ago government directed that 26% of money allocated in the national Budget be redirected from every Ministry and institution to the Ministry of defense ostensibly to militarily resolve Kony-National Resistance Movement (NRM) conflict in Northern Uganda , but the conflict continues. Moreover, many public enterprises have been sold in at peanut prices in the last decade or so but it remains a mystery where most of the proceeds have ended up. However, many top-level politicians and military chiefs have become stinking rich over the same period of time. It is not far-fetched to suggest that such people could easily acquire shares in the dam industry. Since government's immediate choice is Bujagali then this is where their ill-gotten money would go first.

 

If we are to take the Daily Monitor story of June 25 2005 “Aids Funds Diverted to Kisanja -Activists” (Nsangi and Nyanzi, 2005), which claimed that there is a covert plot by the leadership of the NRM (Movement) to divert foreign-sourced AIDS funds to political work, then with such commitment of government to the dam way to “development” it is not far-fetched to suggest that the political corruption of foreign aid may cause the diversion of billions of the reported $ 290 billion (Shs. 535 billion) -half of the amount that is still expected from the Global Fund to fight AIDS -not only for political work but also for erecting large dams on the River Nile. If this suggestion holds water it is obvious that Bujagali dam will be the first beneficiary. This then would be the most corrupt action of government against citizens -using a calamity to erect concrete!

 

Only the social irresponsibility and bankruptcy of leaders can explain diversion of financial resources intended for the present and future social and health security of citizens and their families or communities to concrete, self-aggrandisement or political advantage. Clearly if any leadership is socially irresponsible and bankrupt, then it is irrelevant and a burden to society and, therefore, cannot be expected to be an agent of change that will bring about an enhancement in the quality of life of the majority citizens. In reality that leadership manifests as a roadblock to development and progress in the long- and medium-term. Environmentally speaking, one cannot expect such leadership to spearhead a national crusade for environmental rights, justice and peace. It is the kind of leadership that a country will suffer in terms of environmental corruption via its (leadership's) policies regarding environment and development.

 

In a recent yet to be published article by the title “Ignorance will kill River Nile”, Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2005) writes, “ We should not do what used to be done decades ago -building big dams as potent symbols of both patriotic pride and the conquest of nature by human ingenuity. We should not build big dams to implement the amorphous concept of creating capitalist wealth or as monuments of [political] power and domination. These are ancient attitudes being perpetuated in an era of respect for alternatives. We should not celebrate them. We should also learn that wherever in the poor world they have been built and at the expense of alternatives, big dams have been much more than simply machines to generate electricity and store water. They have been concrete, rock and earth expressions of the dominant ideology of the technological age: icons of economic development and scientific progress to match the nuclear bombs and motor cars”.

 

And quoting Theodore Steinberg (1993) who writing on the Hoover Dam in USA said the dam was supposed to signify greatness, power and domination, Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2005) continues in his “Ignorance will kill the Nile” to write: “We should not allow using electricity as a cover up of the pursuit of greatness, power and domination. Where this has been allowed only a chain of disasters has been the fruit. This is why I would be the last to support wasting of taxpayer's money on big dams when alternatives are there! Let that money be used to enhance quality of life of Ugandans, not the greatness, power and domination of a people by hiding behind hydropower”.

 

It is now clear that if government is bent on pursuing the Bujagali project, the social and health security of Ugandans is set to suffer neglect. Also set to suffer are the already overtaxed citizens who will have to shoulder part of the cost of the dam as this year's National Budget further vividly suggests. However, the recent debt relief extended to the poorest of the poor countries of Africa of which Uganda is one, might as well be another source of badly needed funds for this and other dam burdens. Yet debt relief indicates that Uganda cannot sustain its economy nor bear the burden of further debt. The wise thing to do with the debt relief is to use the money, which would have been used for debt repayment, to provide social services and security to the citizens' health and education.

 

These are real concerns of our civil society, the majority of which has been tortured deeply into weakness, fear, silence and docility and for which choice is being manipulated by the powerful to make it appear that Bujagali dam is a broad democratic choice. Unfortunately civil society's views continue to be dismissed by government as encumbrances to industrialization, poverty eradication, economic growth and availability of electricity. In effect civil society has been officially perceived as just an object and subject of development and a development villain, economic saboteur and roadblock to rather than partner in “development”. Accordingly alternative voice for the voiceless is officially resisted and justification vigorously advanced to exclude it from the development process.

 

Honestly speaking, NAPE and others who have been raising these issues are not anti-hydropower or against development but work for sustainable development in Uganda 's energy sector, evaluation of technologies and the pursuit of the best energy option for Uganda . To this end the role of civil society in the Bujagali dam project has not been to stop development but to act as a barometer of development to enhance the development effectiveness of the project. The extremely high failure of foreign-supported projects, including the recently built and commissioned Kiira dam, has been the motivating force for civil society to distinguish itself as the third force in determining the value of development or development effectiveness of projects -after government and the World Bank.

 

Jesus once said that the first will be the last and the last will be the first. True, he was talking in heavenly terms. However, civil society has taken his saying seriously and concluded that development in Uganda has become more and more remote because government and the World Bank have consistently, persistently and perpetually manifested as the primary and only determinant of what development is and where, when and why it should take place and who should benefit. They are the first and end.

 

Always it has been the powerful through whom foreign aid has been channeled, ostensibly to develop the poor, and the aid donors that have ended up benefiting the most. To implement Stan Burkey's (2000) “people first”, it is the conviction of civil society in Uganda today more than yesterday and tomorrow more than today that no genuine development will take root in Uganda unless in any development design people are deliberately put before machines and concrete. This means that people's aspirations, expectations, values, culture and spirituality should be at the core of the development process and, therefore, come before machines and concrete.

 

For that matter, it does not make sense in the 21 st century for government to continue to pursue development as a purely technical undertaking. We believe Bujagali or any other dam project will only acquire human meaning if humans are put first in and not excluded from the development process. The psychosocial, cultural, spiritual, environmental, ethical and moral consequences of development should, therefore, not be subordinated to the mere urge to avail electricity. This way time, energy and money will be saved and diverted into real and meaningful development for the broad masses of our citizens with their full participation in the development process. How citizens perceive the process of development matters.

 

There must be emotional attachment of citizens to the development process for it to be their process. A development process, which begins by violating or destroying citizens' psychosocial security, cultural-spiritual destiny, environmental security and peace as well as the ethical and moral fabric, cannot be called “people's development”. It is somebody else's or others' development. Civil society and Government must ensure that a spirit of engagement is nurtured and maintained to usher in people's development. This means that both accept and understand each other's role in development and political governance Aquassistance and/or water and environmental solidarity regionally and globally should, therefore, play the role of forging unity of purpose between government and civil society towards this end. For now, unfortunately, what obtains is a situation of engagement and disengagement, which only breeds suspicion and stagnation in the development process.

 

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