Agago District Local Government is conducting a fresh registration exercise for beneficiaries of the cattle restocking programme after widespread irregularities were discovered in the initial selection process.
At least 15 parish chiefs are facing disciplinary and possible legal action. Agago District LC V Chairperson Wilson Otto said the District Executive Committee nullified beneficiary lists from most parishes after security investigations uncovered cases of nepotism, exclusion of legitimate beneficiaries, and failure to conduct community meetings as required by guidelines issued by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
Otto said the district had lagged in uploading beneficiaries into the OPM system, with only one beneficiary captured at the time. He attributed the delay to misconduct by some parish chiefs. “As you are aware, Agago District Local Government was in the news for being the last because only one beneficiary had been uploaded.
The reason was this kind of misconduct by the parish chiefs,” he said.According to Otto, investigations found that some officials inserted names of relatives and personal acquaintances into the lists, while others failed to organize community selection meetings altogether. “You’ll find there are those who wrote the names of their fathers, their uncles, themselves, and their family members. All these were in our list,” he said.
He cited Kiwaru Parish as one of the areas where no community meeting was held, leaving residents unaware that beneficiary selection was taking place. In other areas, including Agago Town Council, community-selected beneficiaries were allegedly omitted and replaced with names that could not be justified through meeting records. The District Executive Committee approved beneficiary lists from only 23 of the 117 parishes, sending the remaining parishes back for a fresh verification process.
“We promised them that whoever still brings the wrong list will be sent back until they provide the correct list as guided by the Office of the Prime Minister,” Otto said. The district expects to upload 367 of the 702 beneficiaries into the OPM system by Monday to enable eligible residents to access government funds in the first phase of the restocking programme.
Agago District has 67,760 households, according to the 2024 National Population and Housing Census. Otto said the beneficiary selection exercise is critical to improving household incomes and advancing economic development, stressing that all public servants must adhere to government guidelines and uphold accountability in service delivery.
Resident District Commissioner (RDC) James Nabinson Kidega vowed tough action against officials implicated in the irregularities.“I am very annoyed by these people who are dealing wrongly with their own people. This must stop, and the only way to stop it is through action,” Kidega said. He said politics would not interfere with the handling of the matter and that legal procedures would be followed against those found culpable.
“I told all politicians to keep away from this issue and allow me to manage it legally. Eight of them have already been arrested, and I am going to pursue the rest,” he said. Kidega added that the number of officials under investigation could rise from 15 to 20, warning that those found responsible would face interdiction and replacement. “When they complete the investigations, they will be interdicted and their positions replaced.
There are many young people ready to work and serve the public properly,” he said. The livestock restocking initiative, approved by the government for the Acholi, Lango, and Teso sub-regions, provides livestock worth Shs5 million to selected households. Each parish is expected to nominate five or six beneficiaries through Parish Development Committees. URN