Ugandans have heard enough about corruption.
What they need now is something more tangible: their money back. The allegations emerging from the Ministry of Works and Transport are staggering. Minister Fred Byamukama says corruption in road projects may be costing the country as much as Shs 50 billion every three months.
He has described schemes involving inflated contracts, manipulated road designs, questionable compensation claims and collusion between officials and contractors. On one project, people allegedly planted fake graves along a proposed road so they could claim compensation.
On the Busega Expressway, Byamukama says a project originally expected to cost Shs 600 billion rose to Shs 2 trillion. On the Masaka–Mutukula Road, where only 23 per cent of the work had been completed with one year remaining, the minister alleges there was an attempt to extract another Shs 150 billion from government.
These allegations must, of course, be investigated and tested through due process. Being accused by a minister is not the same as being convicted by a court. But the revelations raise a larger question: what should happen to public money after corruption is proved?
For too long, Uganda’s anti-corruption conversation has concentrated on naming suspects, announcing arrests and promising prosecution. Those steps matter. But they are incomplete if a convicted thief goes to prison while the proceeds of the theft remain safely invested in houses, land, businesses or other assets.
Punishment without recovery leaves the taxpayer carrying the loss. Consider what road corruption means. When money intended for a highway is stolen, the victim is not an abstract entity called “government”.
It is the trader whose goods take hours longer to reach market. It is the farmer whose produce loses value on a bad road. It is the motorist paying repeatedly for repairs. It is the community that waits another decade for the road it was promised.
The injustice becomes even harder to defend when government is struggling with debt. The 2026/27 budget allocates about Shs 12 trillion to interest payments, while the cost of servicing debt has risen sharply in recent years.
Uganda cannot afford a system in which it borrows money, loses some of it through corruption and then leaves citizens to repay both the debt and the interest. That is why the current crackdown must go beyond dramatic arrests. Where investigations establish theft, prosecutors should pursue the perpetrators.
Where courts convict them, the state should aggressively pursue the proceeds of their crimes through the applicable legal processes. Ill-gotten property should not become a retirement package for corruption.
Where the law permits confiscation and sale after due process, those assets should be converted back into public value. And there could hardly be a more fitting form of restitution than returning recovered road money to roads.
If Shs 20 billion stolen from a road project is recovered, citizens should be able to see where that Shs 20 billion went. Put it back into the unfinished road. Publish the amount recovered. Publish the project receiving it.
Let taxpayers follow their money from seizure to construction. That would transform asset recovery from an obscure legal exercise into visible accountability. It would also send a stronger deterrent message than arrest alone.
The calculation of corruption changes when an official knows that conviction could mean not only prison but also losing the mansion, land, or other assets proved to have been acquired from stolen public funds.
Byamukama says: “We have arrested and sacked some people at the Ministry of Works, and we expect a good number of people to go to Luzira prison because of corruption.”
Luzira may be part of the answer. It cannot be the whole answer. Uganda must build an anti-corruption system that investigates credibly, prosecutes fairly, convicts on evidence and follows stolen public money wherever it goes. Then recover it.
The post Recover every stolen shilling, make the corrupt pay Uganda back appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.
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