By Isaac Christopher Lubogo
We grew up singing: “Tugende tuube (Too-GEHN-deh Too-OO-beh)… Tuunaaba waani? (Too-NAH-bah WAH-nee?) Ewo Muyindhi (Eh-WOH Moo-YEEN-dhee). Bwanatukwaata? (BWAH-nah-too-KWAH-tah?) Aaah, nzekibilikoo (NZEH-kee-bee-LEE-koh).” It was a children’s game, but it carried the weight of prophecy. Beneath its humor lay a terrifying truth: that when poverty bites, theft becomes survival; that in Uganda, crime is not born out of greed, but out of hunger.
The Bible teaches us: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” But Uganda has written a different scripture in blood and dust: “The lack of money is the root of all evil.” For it is poverty that drives men to crime, that reduces dignity to barter, that teaches a child to sing of theft as if it were destiny. The boy who chants “Tugende tuube (Let us go and steal)” is not a budding gangster—he is a philosopher announcing the condition of his country.
What is corruption in Uganda if not the politics of poverty? Ministers do not loot iron sheets for Karamoja because they are hungry. They loot because they know the governed are desperate enough to tolerate it. A starving citizen has no energy to resist; hunger dulls outrage. A man without money does not ask why his taxes are stolen—he is too busy wondering what he will feed his children. Poverty becomes the alibi of power, the silence of the masses, the grease that allows thieves to operate in daylight.
Look at the slums of Kampala, where young men rise each morning not with prayers for bread but with the chorus: “Lord, protect us as we go to steal today.” This is not mere criminality—it is theology reversed. It is poverty rewriting the Lord’s Prayer into a hymn of desperation. Where there is no bread, survival itself becomes sin.
We must confront this uncomfortable reality: a nation cannot moralize its way out of crime when its people are drowning in want. Telling a starving man that “the love of money is evil” is mockery. His problem is not love of money—his problem is the lack of it. His temptation is not greed, but hunger. His crime is not covetousness, but survival.
And here lies Uganda’s paradox: poverty does not only breed petty crime in ghettos—it fertilizes grand corruption in boardrooms. The villager steals a goat because he has nothing; the minister steals billions because he fears ever returning to nothing. Poverty is the root, and from it grow two branches: the desperation of the poor and the greed of the rich. Both sing the same refrain, only in different dialects: “Tugende tuube (Let us go and steal).”
This is why Uganda’s scandals sting so deeply. When vaccines are looted, it is the poor child who dies unprotected. When pension funds vanish, it is the old man who collapses in a bank queue. When relief food is stolen, it is the mother in Karamoja who watches her child starve. Poverty makes the crime possible; poverty makes the consequences unbearable. And so the circle tightens: lack of money breeds evil, and evil perpetuates lack of money.
Other nations understood this and broke the chain. Singapore invested in discipline and prosperity; Rwanda in order and accountability; Botswana in prudent use of resources. They proved that prosperity is not just an economic condition—it is moral infrastructure. Where people have bread, they no longer pray for protection as they go out to steal. Where wages are fair, theft loses its chorus. Where opportunity exists, dignity replaces desperation.
Uganda must therefore rewrite its theology. It is not the love of money that damns us—it is the lack of it. Poverty is not noble. Poverty is not humility. Poverty is the womb of theft, the cradle of crime, the graveyard of morality.
We must sing a new song. No longer “Tugende tuube (Too-GEHN-deh Too-OO-beh) — let us go and steal” but “Tugende tukole (Too-GEHN-deh Too-KOH-leh) — let us go and work.” Not “Tuunaaba waani? (Too-NAH-bah WAH-nee? — where shall we wash?)” but “Tuunaaba mu maaso gaffe (Too-NAH-bah moo MAH-soh GAH-feh — we shall wash in our conscience).” Not “Bwanatukwaata? (BWAH-nah-too-KWAH-tah? — if they catch us?)” as an excuse, but “Bwanatukwaata, tukomekkere obulungi (…too-KOH-meh-keh-reh oh-boo-LOON-gee — if they catch us, let it be for doing right).”
For a people with bread on the table do not chant theft as a hymn. Only the hungry compose such choruses. The true evil in Uganda is not greed—it is hunger institutionalized, poverty perpetuated, opportunity stolen. And unless we cure this disease, our children will keep singing “Tugende tuube,” not as play, but as prophecy.
