KAMPALA, UGANDA: Former presidential candidate and the leader of the National Economic Empowerment Dialogue (NEED), Joseph Kizza Kabuleta, has announced that he is taking the government to court over the mess surrounding registration for National identity cards (IDs).
Kabuleta made the announcement on Monday, July 18 during a press conference where he explained that citizenship by decent as a qualification to register for the National ID was omitted and that every Ugandan, especially Ugandans by decent should be concerned about.
“We are assembling a team of public interest lawyers to go and put a case in court to find out why they removed the issue of citizenship by descent from the Nation ID, and why Uganda is the only country in the world whose national IDs expire,” Kabuleta declared.
“This has been bothering me since I went to apply for my Nation ID. I reached there and they asked me what type of citizenship I wanted. I want to tick citizenship by descent and I realised it was not listed. So I ticked citizen by birth, but it bothered me,” he added.
The former journalist says that the removal of citizenship by descent is unique to Uganda and that all the other Commonwealth countries have citizenship by descent as a qualification for nationality.
He added that it is an important form of citizenship because so long as you can prove that your parents, grandparents of great grandparents were born in the country, you have a right to citizenship by descent, not just by birth.
“I don’t have to have been born in Uganda to be Uganda. If my parents went for kyeyo and I was born there, I am a citizen of Uganda by decent,” Kabuleta stressed.
Kabuleta added that it is also important politically because there are people who are interested in the presidency and they were not born in Uganda and they do not have ancestors in Uganda.
“Citizenship has been a very political issue for decades. For instance, remember in 1980, Sam Kuteesa beat Museveni in a parliamentary election. The main issue on which Kuteesa won that election was that Museveni was not a citizen. ‘We cannot allow a foreigner to come and become member of parliament here’, he said. Kuteesa was running on the issue that Museveni was not born in Uganda. Obote was saying the same.
“There are even people that were trying to take the matter to the East African Court for Museveni to prove citizenship. But he turned it in a very sneaky way and removed citizen by decent from qualifications for political reasons, we believe,” Kabuleta said.
Kabuleta added that politics aside, if the National ID registrar’s form doesn’t ask about ancestors or your tribe but instead asks about the minute, hour and date you were born, your spouse, et cetera.
“My main concern is that people are being born here and being given citizenship at the same level as people whose ancestors are Ugandans. There are different levels of citizenship. Ousiders can get it by birth or naturalization but we want the citizenship by decent to also exist,” he emphasised.
Tribes are in the constitution, and those registering Ugandans for National IDs should take that seriously, according to Kabuleta. He added that our ancestors, our clans and tribes are very important because that is how one can tell that you are Ugandan.
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