Ignore the hefty UPDF budget that is always earmarked at the beginning of every fiscal year, in a corruption infested nation like Uganda, not everyone in UPDF is a beneficiary. Deprived of deprivation of basic welfare, Uganda’s People Defense Force is becoming a mercenary group.

UPDF soldiers serving in Somalia haven’t been paid for the past 10 months, many have indulged in illegal activities. Reliable sources from security circles in Kampala and Somalia have it that soldiers who have been serving under AMISOM have not been paid for some months and many are threatening to abscond from duties.

The developments follow many other outcry that pushed some of the soldiers to sell arms to straying armed groups that roam freely in Somalia while some of commanders are reported to have stolen fuel from general headquarters and sold it to the black markets in parts of Mogadishu.

A reminder that the African Union provides at least $1,028 for each Amisom soldier each month, criminal despot Museveni’s junta government deducts around $200 for administrative costs and about $800 is supposed to be sent to a designated account of every member of UPDF. However, no penny has ever been disbursed for the past 10 months.

As many as five soldiers were shot this year for protesting terrible living conditions. Mid this year, Charles Engola, State Minister for labor was shot dead in a broad-day for mistreating some of his bodyguards. Private Wilson Sabiiti who shot the minister had earlier stated that soldiers are hungry, angry and paid peanuts that cannot help them make a living.

According to many soldiers in UPDF, the stories in the barracks are that tyrant Museveni allocates to himself a lion’s share budget to cater to his needs while he sends soldiers to die in unworthy and paid military campaigns and the soldiers at home subject themselves to corruption, alcoholism, prostitution, and robbery due to life hardship.

UPDF soldiers in DRC have resorted to timber businesses citing low payment. Plundering DRC resources does not only limit to stealing of minerals which most of it is done by immediate cronies. Those that have no access to those minerals did not shy away of indulging in other unprofessional activities like looting properties of Congolese and trade them for quick earnings.

When NRA was transformed into a national army, there was high hope that it would turn into a professional army and ditch the bush-war guerilla tag. It did not go as planned, just like a corrupt regime, the army followed suit of its commander criminal despot Museveni, it became a tool of violence, chaos and a killing machine. The same criminal it serves is the one that starves it and or deny its basic requirements like salaries, accommodation, ratios, etc.