2021 – 2026 Should Be Museveni’s Last Term – Pastor Serwadda

Pastor Joseph Serwadda has called on President Yoweri Museveni to prepare serving his final full term.

Serwadda, who heads the Born-Again Pentecostal faith in Uganda, last week urged Ugandans to vote for President Museveni in next year’s election, and to use the next 5 years to prepare him for proper retirement.

This he said however, would involve convincing the president and reassuring him that he and his family will be safe once he leaves office.

“There should be a small team of people that brings this up to him and says, ‘Mr President, there will be a Uganda where you will not be, whether you like it or not; You are the one that keeps talking about grandchildren. Well, your grandchildren have now grown. They are very old, they have even grown beards,’” Serwadda said during an overnight service at his Church in Ndeeba.

“The Kenyans were smarter than us,” he added. “They sat with Mr Moi and told him; ‘You, sir, are going home. And you are going home with this and this and this, and everything else you want. Go home.”

“No one should threaten an old man. What does it hurt telling an old man to sit home and let the young ones take care of him?”

Museveni, according to Pastor Serwadda, needs reassurance that the (opposition) groups that keep breathing down his neck, will not come after him while in retirement.

Such groups, he said, should choose peace and not war.

“Leave the man alone. Do you only want war and not peace? The bible says the Lord will bless his people with peace,” he added, quoting Psalms 29:11.

“Let’s just ask for five more years and during that time, we will take him and to the side and ask him to step aside. We must also answer all his concerns about his family; about his children and his grandchildren. We’ll give him a convoy; he can even keep the one he has. We’ll give him security and his salary. That is what is called resting in peace. Do you only want people rest after they have died?”

President Museveni has often been accused of being evasive on the question of his retirement.

In his most recent televised interview on NBS, he once again cited unfinished work, which he said includes uniting Uganda, building Pan-Africanism, social economic transformation and Democracy

“I’m not looking for a job,” he said. “I have a job and it has always been there: My cows. If you check in my family, we had never a Muruka chief working for the government; but we had to come in politics because the political leaders have failed.”

“The question is, have we finished the program of NRM? And if it is not finished, why are you worried about all of us contributing to finish it? If the people of Uganda agree, I would not like to desert the struggle…to run away.”