Africa-Press – Uganda. A video clip that went viral this week showed an incident in which suspected thugs waylaid their victim on a boda boda and proceeded to rob him right in the middle of the road as motorists and bystanders looked on. The incident is believed to have happened on Friday at Kololo, an upscale Kampala city suburb.
It is suspected that the thugs trailed their victim, believed to have been carrying money, from somewhere — likely a bank — and pounced on him right in the middle of a busy road where they were only too confident that no one would intervene. And, tragically for this country, it happens to have gone as planned.
This incident is not isolated. The nonchalance of the passersby and everyone else is almost symbolic of the fact that “we have seen this so often and it’s none of our business”. It is only that this one has been captured on video, just like a few similar incidents in the recent past.
In all these cases, the victims are violently assaulted and their possessions taken. They are usually lucky to emerge out of this with their life but they nonetheless face a lot of trauma — let alone the injuries and big losses of valuables and cash.
There have been one too many of such incidents for this country to continue to look the other way and pretend it’s none of our business. In a cash economy like ours, carrying huge cash at hand is often the bad habit many have to put up with. The danger this exposes individuals to is always lurking but this is not to say only those carrying large sums of money are being or can be attacked. We have seen organised criminals wantonly snatch phones and other valuables in traffic in the past.
As these thugs grow bolder, where is the future of this country? It is easy to advise those carrying cash like that to avoid using boda bodas that exposes them to such attacks. But that does not solve the problem. There is no guarantee that such bold thugs will not trail their targets in cars or whatever other means and still waylay them.
Security agencies led by the Security minister must not let Kampala, and Uganda at that, turn into a bastion for hoodlums and other thugs. Even with the famed CCTV cameras that were touted as the game changer in security in the capital and its suburbs, there is just no letting in criminality.
Security is non-negotiable and this is a tenet the NRM/A was famed for, and used as one of the pillars of their justification to takeover government. If security can crush peaceful protesters even before they lift the first placard, they should equally be good enough in combating criminality before the thugs become too bold to stop.
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