OWEYEGHA-AFUNADUULA: Sucess Without a Successor Is No Success

By Oweyegha-Afunaduula

Perhaps there are no two words in lingual history that have been written or talked about than the words “Success” and “Failure”. Many people see them as adversaries, but really, they are co-joined twins. They never leave each other behind. Where there is failure there is success. In fact, when success occurs then next logical thing is failure and vice versa. It is impossible to be continually successful without failure.

And if you follow Chinese Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s “Try Fail, Try Again and Fail Until you Succeed, then ultimately you succeed if working hard is a virtue for you. Unfortunately, many people view failure negatively and in human terms only. If they don’t commit suicide, they may do terrible things such as committing murder or taking to illicit drugs instead of rethinking their ways, choices or the way they do things. They don’t even ask, “What is success without failure?”

Many times, we fail because of wrong use of time, energy and money. Other times we fail because of wrong relations to society, people and tasks or the value we attack to certain things in our environment.

Sometimes failure is prescribed when we devalue what society has valued for ages, and the times reject us. Still at other times we fail because we do not take new innovations seriously. Greed and selfishness may make us do things that ultimately lead to failure.

Many people, spend time and energy primitively accumulating wealth and investing money in things such as ranches, buildings, huge parties, festivals and worldwide travels and they think they are very successful people.

They are prepared to do anything at any cost to achieve all these things. However, success is not all these things singly or collectively. When they pursue these things, they downgrade the most important thing in the development, transformation and progress of humanity and society: investing in human resources at all levels of society. They hate failure as if success hates failure!

I have titled this article “Success without a successor is no success, but I had a wide range of topics to choose from:

• What is success without a successor?
• Success without a successor is ultimate failure
• Success without a well-prepared successor is failure
• There is no success without a successor
• Success without a successor is failure in disguise
• Success without a successor is a success failure
• Success without successful succession is damn failure
• Success without a successor is dead

It is natural that most people focus on the acquisitive habits, usually because of the stomach. We are a highly acquisitive species, Homo sapiens. While there are exceptions to the rule, many people in Uganda in particular and the world in general struggle to accumulate things even if they know they will be on Earth for a short time only. This explains the spiralling corruption especially in Uganda.

Most of the corrupt are in public offices. Instead of working to uplift humanity right from their families, they work to convince the world that they have used their offices to accumulate even what they do not need.

They are investing money, often stolen form the poor and needy, in building castles as homes at exorbitant cost yet they only need a master bedroom, a room for their children, a guest room, kitchen, store and toilet while they live in the physical form.

Right now, Uganda is faced with acquisitiveness and corruption as the worst diseases of the mind. They have taken the place of intellectual poverty and ignorance. It is as if the national budget is made to satisfy the consumptive and the acquisitive habits of the people we call our leaders.

It is extremely rare to come across a leader, both at local and national level, that does not own property not commensurate with his or her legitimate income. They are pursuing a wrong and harmful yardstick for success.

If I wrote about “The Educated Fools of Uganda”, I should be writing about “The Educated Thieves of Uganda” too who think, believe and are convinced they are successful, and may be working hard to ensure that their children perpetuate the thieving culture well in the future. They are in every station of life today. In the past, it was the poor and ill-educated that used to steal.

And they would steal chicken and food. Today it is the educated and employed at public expense that are stealing every coin, leaving almost nothing for the education and health of Ugandans and for infrastructure development. One concerned citizen did not hesitate to tell me that if all the financial riches of the educated thieves of today were pooled together, they would overshoot the riches of Uganda as a country.

In the past we would measure the success of a government in terms of how many hospitals, schools and roads it had built every five years. We would measure the success of a doctor in terms of how many successful operations he or she carried out. We would measure the success of a farmer in terms of crops or heads of cattle he was able to produce in a year and contributed to the development, transformation and progress of Uganda.

We would measure the success of a teacher in terms of how many of the young people that passed through his or her hands ultimately succeeded in life. However, these days these producers are ignored, and instead focus is put on politics and politicians. Children who would reproduce our population and internally produce to spur our country to another level are being exported to foreign slave markets.

Or else our rulers have failed to use our best brains to develop and transform our country and are instead allowing the painful brain drain to spiral upwards as the country retrogresses. Intellectuals are now an endangered species, yet in the past they were the ones who clarified and articulated issues for society.

I know someone is silently asking, “Hasn’t Oweyegha-Afunaduula succeeded? Well, I have not succeeded in terms of money and property.  In my almost 75 years of life, I have failed far more than I have succeeded. I am satisfied with the little success stories. In any case life without failures is monotonous. I am sure every successful person has many failure stories to tell.

I may say in terms of intellectual and academic productivity I succeeded, not for self-glorification but for ensuring that there was an adequate cadre of young people to produce intellectually and academically as knowledge workers.

I started teaching in 1970 after doing my joint Cambridge/East African Certificate Examinations at Busoga College, Mwiri in 1969. I don’t know where most of my Primary Seven young people I taught at Namulanda Primary School in present-day Luuka District in Busoga are. Of course some must have died, but I have met some who have been successful in different stations of life, including teaching. So, if I was successful at teaching in primary school, then I got successors.

In 1983-1985, while waiting to defend my MSc Thesis in Zoology (The Biology of Conservation) at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, I taught at Jinja Senior Secondary School at both O-and A-level. Some of the Students I taught were Katumba-Wamala, Paul Kagame, Sudhir Ruperalia and Hirji.

Since Jinja Senior Secondary School was the largest School in Uganda then, many young people interacted with me in School and are performing different functions in different stations of life. I cannot remember all of them. If some of them read this article, let them contact me. They are all a measure of my success at that school.

After successfully defending my Masters Thesis, I taught at Kanunga High School in Kiambu District of Kenya. I met many Ugandans, including Dr. Anthony Isabirye, teaching at that school in 1986 when I joined it as a biology and geography teacher.

Of my more than 120 A-level geography class 1986-1987, 92 students were admitted to University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology. They must be serving Kenya and the world in various roles. I would be very happy to hear from some of them when they read this article.

I can say that as a teacher I succeeded. I understand some of them are no university professors, associate professors and senior lecturers at various universities in Kenya.  Of course, others are in various institutions in the country

When I joined Makerere University in 1991 as a lecturer based in Zoology, Faculty of Science, so many young people passed through my hands over the years. They predominantly came from the Departments of Zoology, Botany and Forestry and the Makerere University Institute of environment and Natural Resources (MUINER).

When I extended my ecological footprint to the then Faculty of Social Science to teach Environmental Management in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration and Environmental Planning and Management in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, it meant many more young people passing through my hands across the university curriculum. Many have become academics and others are in non-academic institutions. I am proud of the following:

1. Associate Professor Paul Omach, Head of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Makerere University
2. Patrick Ibembe, Special Assistant to the President of Uganda, Tibuhaburwa Museveni
3. Dr Waiswa Dauda Batega, Political Science and Public Administration, Makerere University
4. Dr Eddy Walakira, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Makerere University.
5. Associate Professor Gerald Eilu, Department of Forestry, Biodiversity and Tourism
6. Samuel Mugisha, Department of Zoology, Makerere University
7. Eric Sande, Zoology Department, Makerere University
8. Professor James Kalema, Botany Department Makerere University
9. Associate Prof. Vicent Muwanika, Makerere University Institute of Environment and Natural Resources, Makerere University.
10. John Tabuti, Makerere University Institute of Environment and Natural Resources, Makerere University
11. Sarar Bunoti Nantono, School of Public Health, Makerere University.
12. Associate Professor Denis Sekiwu, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Foundations Kabale University.
13. Dr Akankwasar Barirega, Executive Director, National Environment Management Authority, NEMA
14. Onesimus Muhwezi, Regional Technical Advisor-Ecosystems and Biodiversity at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
15. Dorothy Kagwa, head, strategic planning and management, Nile Basin Initiative, Entebbe
16. Ambassador Henry Mayega, Consul General of Uganda’s Consulate in Dubai – the United Arab Emirates.
17. Henry Nakelet Opolot, Commissioner, Agricultural Extension and Skills Management, and Coordinator, Agriculture Cluster Development Project, Directorate of Agricultural Extension Services Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries
18. Gerald Karyeija, Associate Professorof Public Administration & Management, and Dean, School of Management Science, Uganda Management Institute.
19. Mr Abubaker Wandera, Programme Director, The Global Environmental Facility (GEF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

I also have some successful businessmen such as Michael Mawanda, who was a successful businessman in the chemicals/Paints industry before he entered politics, which is currently causing him trouble; and Simon Sekankya who has been successful in long distance haulage transport (transporting goods by road).

Of course, if one has lectured at university for nearly 20 years, which I did, the number of success stories of one’s students can be huge and the list extensive. And there aren’t many lecturers who remember most their students. Therefore, this is a partial list of the success stories of my students. I regard their successes as my success story in preparing human resources for Uganda. If I am not satisfied today, when will I be satisfied.

My success story is not complete until I mention the success story in my family.  Among my children, I have one who has been a secondary school teacher since 1998 and she has a son who is doing electrical engineering at Makerere University and a son who is doing physics, chemistry and mathematics at Namilyango College.

I have a son who is holds a Bachelors degree and Masters degree in Psychology just like Dr Sarah Bunoti Nantono. I also have a son who is a dean of Law at one of Uganda’s Private Universities, and who has published a book titled “Negligence, Strict Liability and Nuisance Law in Uganda”. Two other children hold their Bachelors degrees.  Therefore, I can confidently say that education-wise, mine has been a success story in my family, country and region.

Lastly, I should not leave out mentioning that I have been successful as a multigenre writer. I hope I will get some among my former students and among my children to inherit the gift of being a multigenre writer.  Unfortunately, those in university settings tend to write in rigid academic tribes with limited opportunity to think and write across the tribal boundaries because of the strict disciplinary structure and function of the African university and careerism.

I have nothing t ask God to give me except to guide me in publishing my three books this year.

Yes, Success without a successor is not success.

For God and my Country

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