By Steven Masiga
During the recently concluded population census by the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UBOS), many things didn’t add up. For example, asking questions like whether the occupants of the house occasionally engage in hallucinations, some sort of daydreaming due to stress and other related factors, and questions like how many phones one owns, was a wrong parameter for establishing the well-being of the people.
Since somebody may have a cellular phone but fails to even put airtime or data on it, my thinking is that the most appropriate question should have been phrased like: “How many cows, goats, or rabbits do you have?” since many people, even currently in cities and towns, have joined farming. The second most appropriate question would be “Now how do you manage to feed the animals?” since current farming involves some level of expenditure on animal feeds, whereas humans may go hungry, but animals can’t hear of that.
In establishing how much one spends on animals, you can correspondingly estimate the well-being of that family, including fees paid to which schools and perhaps type of shelter. The question of animals is highly relevant since Uganda is a farming community, not a technological country. Questions on what the majority of citizens subsist on are more relevant in this setting since even grants like PDM and EMYOOGA are meant to be geared towards productivity, not buying phones.
As a cultural institution, we have a duty to ascertain the true numbers of our people in the thousands of clans that make up Masabaland. Why would clans be more enormous in number than the total population of our people?
If I am to use another parameter to estimate the total number of our people using some refined data, for example, registers of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), the NRM voters in the seven districts that make up Masabaland are estimated to be about 2 million persons (voters) without factoring in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), National Unity Platform (NUP), Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), Conservative Party (CP) registered voters, and also not factoring in school-going children and infants still at home, as well as those in the diaspora and several parts of Uganda.
Prof. Florence Wakako of the United States Bamasaba Association says Bamasaba outside Uganda number over 1 million, a view validated by IMUKA President in the UK Mr. Michael Materesi. On average, every household has about three to four infants who are not school-going and who can’t be captured in the political registers. Therefore, if you consider the various clusters, and if put together, we are more than the total numbers provided by UBOS.
The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UBOS) made some unforgivable historical mistakes again that have collectively angered the Bamasaba people, if the social media outbursts and other interlocutors on the theme of the census are anything to go by. Firstly, they grouped us along with the 1902 Orders in Council, which clustered Bamasaba along with the Baganda, Bakedi, and Sabinyi, broadly calling us the Elgon people. This categorization was overtaken by various constitutional amendments. It is wrong, after 122 years, to still refer to us as the Elgon people. We are the Bamasaba. The Elgon tag was a colonial classification.
UBOS also made another factual error by concluding that the Bamasaba people who inhabit the seven districts of Masabaland are about two million people in number. This may be a misleading summation, and allow me to validate my suspicions on this population conclusion by UBOS. The National Electoral Commission voters roll of 2021 puts the Bamasaba people at roughly 1 million persons as the total number of voters, and if juxtaposed with the NRM electoral register, the Bamasaba people who are of voting age alone number about 2 million people. This 2 million Bamasaba of voting age, as per the NRM register, is devoid of other political persuasions as captured above. I am equally cognizant of the fact that the NRM register or any political party register may be quite propagandistic in nature, and thus the moderating one would be from that of the National Electoral Commission.
The National Electoral Commission, which puts Bamasaba at roughly one million, was updated around four years before 2021, and on account of the COVID-19 restrictions, it could have had internal contradictions. The best way of arriving at a somewhat acceptable figure of the Bamasaba population is counting from either the EC or political party registers, then nursery and primary-going children, since all these do not appear in political registers, hence helping us to overcome the errors related to multiple countings.
Namisindwa District, for example, without bringing on board nursery learners, has over 90,000 UPE learners, and Mbale District alone has about 70,000 pupils in government schools without bringing on board nursery schools and private primary schools. Both Namisindwa and Mbale District alone account for over 200,000 learners in both nursery and primary. Once you bring on board other districts, the total number of learners may be somewhere around 1.5 million in both primary government, nursery, and private schools.
Again, why I am not factoring in secondary and university-going Bamasaba people is that we have part of their data captured by the Electoral Commission register and political party register since 80% of them are of voting age. But we still have 20% there under secondary, and with this, the number again shoots up.
Whereas the registers of Mbale City may have non-Bamasaba people, that is quite insignificant and can’t harm the total picture being presented here.
As already posited above, other clusters that ought to be inquired into are schools. The school census, if sampled by district, stands at over 150,000 learners per district. Mbale District alone has roughly 70,000 pupils under government sponsorship without bringing on board nursery learners.
The above summations alone put our population above what UBOS captured. If other clusters, like the diaspora community, those Bamasaba who stay in Kayunga, Kiryadongo, and others like 666 religious groups who prefer not to be counted and hunters who are busy in forests, are all factored in, including the sick and those in police and prison cells, the number is quite higher.
The next census, slated for some time ahead, should be carried out with more precision if its outcome is to be received without any form of skepticism by our people. The cultural institution and church should be properly involved in the future.
The writer is a legal scholar and also the spokesperson of the Bamasaba cultural institution. Tel: 0782231577
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