By Fidel Boy Leon
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has directed the immediate publication of all cattle compensation beneficiaries and pending claimants in Northern Uganda as part of efforts to curb ghost claimants and restore transparency in the long-running rehabilitation programme.
The President, while meeting Acholi leaders in Gulu District on August 18, 2025, gave government agencies a one-month deadline to audit and verify all lists.
“Publish the 4,000 who were paid in Acholi and how much they got, and also the 12,000 who are not yet paid but approved. Let us all see the lists and do mass verification. “If it’s fake, the public will expose it,” Museveni ordered.
The government launched the cattle compensation scheme in 2022 to support households in Acholi, Lango, and Teso subregions who lost livestock during the 1970s insurgencies and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war.
So far, 28,000 claimants have been paid, with payments to 16,000 more pending. However, an additional 12,000 names have since emerged, raising concerns of inflated or fraudulent lists.
Museveni revealed that the government has already spent Shs 150 billion on compensation and would require Shs 500 billion more, but questioned whether the current model is sustainable.
“Even with direct payments, corruption has crept in. A few people are getting rich. “If we have this money, should we continue this way or rethink the approach?” he asked.
The President further reframed the initiative as a rehabilitation scheme rather than compensation, arguing that the effects of war are universal and cannot be individually quantified.
“In other parts of the world, you cannot compensate for war or natural disasters like earthquakes. “What we can do is empower all families equally,” he explained.
Justice Minister Norbert Mao blamed “messy politics” and opportunists for undermining the scheme, noting that insecurity forced Acholi away from livestock farming into food insecurity.
“We are cultivators and cattle keepers, but because of insecurity resulting from messy politics, we lost our livestock, so now, instead of selling cows to solve our problems, we started selling food which we should be eating, then we faced food insecurity. That’s how we ended up having the World Food Programme coming to distribute food in the most fertile part of Uganda, which was indeed a scandal.”
The Minister also revealed that there’s a problem with the way the cattle compensation initiative is being implemented.
“When you told the claimants to accept to solve the issue outside court, the lawyers and the thieves came in and caused more confusion.”
Rwot David Onen Acana II, Paramount Chief of Acholi, acknowledged that Shs 3.8 trillion has been injected into Northern Uganda since the start of the rehabilitation programme, but said corruption and weak governance have slowed its impact. He pledged stronger cultural mobilisation for production and development.
“The reason for this limited success is anchored in factors such as corruption and actors in the implementation value chain, weak governance and leadership to facilitate absorption of funds in key plan sectors to trigger sustainable growth and development,” he said.
The President cautioned Acholi against electing “ideologically bankrupt leaders” who thrive on tribal and religious divisions.
“Once you bring the politics of tribe and religion, the first casualty is politics. No tribe in Uganda is even 20 percent of the population. “No religion is 40 percent,” he warned.
He also reiterated the government’s commitment to free education, urging leaders to budget with priorities in mind:
“The people blocking the future of our children are those refusing to implement UPE. Let’s concentrate on providing free education in government schools for children.”