President Yoweri Museveni has banned Uganda police force from giving bonds to cattle thieves insisting that they should be arraigned in courts of law. Museveni who addressed Ugandans hours to usher in 2025 said cattle thefts are rampant and this is due to police’s soft handling of such criminals.
“There is rampant stealing of cattle, goats, etc and the soft handling by the police and the courts of such criminals through giving them police bonds and court bails. I have raised the issue of bails with His Lordship the Chief Justice, and I have banned the issue of Police bonds,” Museveni said.
The head of state said “Any police personnel that give a police bond to a village thief when the case is ready for trial, will be held fully accountable. Firm legal handling of criminals, is very useful.”
Museveni said in his recent Karamoja trip, he was told that a total of 3,000 Karamojong Karachunas, through the efficient and dedicated mechanism of the Military Court Martial, are in the different jails including 900 jailed at Kitalya Prison. According to Museveni, the arrests and subsequently jailing of cattle thieves commonly known as warriors has brought total peace in Karamoja and the surrounding districts of Acholi, Lango, Teso, Bugisu and Sebei.
Also, Museveni raised concern over coffee thefts and warned that if police fails to deal with the culprits, he will be forced to deploy the Army to contain the vice. “If the concerned People do not act, I will involve the UPDF to empower all the wealth creators – farmers, etc – to guard their property by activating the vast militia of our LDUs. It will not be good for those thieves,” Museveni said.
Museveni also castigated people who protested the merging of Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Fisheries Industry (MAAIF) said they have started paying the agricultural scientists very well.
“…in the face of fierce opposition by some groups including the bogus UCDA that were misinforming Ugandans that they were responsible for the success of the coffee effort. It is our Scientists that have developed these seeds. They have never been under UCDA. Moreover, OWC distributed more coffee seedlings than the corrupt UCDA. When I involved OWC in seed distribution in 2013, our production of coffee was 2.7 million bags. It is now 9 million bags because of OWC,” Museveni said.
Museveni also condemned anti-corruption protests which he said were shallow schemes by local traitors and their foreign sponsors, to cause criminality and civil disorder like you saw in Kenya, including gathering demonstrators and shooting them using Iraqi returnees, to give the impression that it is the Government that killed them. He said the whole evil scheme, was defeated by God, the UPDF, the other security agencies and the People, as pointed out above.