For many Ugandans, the evidence is weighty and undeniable—security across the country is crumbling, and many have lost count of how many women and young children have been abducted, raped or murdered in cold blood.
No one is safe, a local news daily reported on June 10, the rich and poor, guarded and unguarded, high and low of society, are as exposed and vulnerable as a monkey trapped in a burning forest.
As all this happens, authority and influence is fading, its adherents are disengaging. The kidnaps, assassinations started slowly, but have picked up steam.
The latest, being that of Arua Municipality Member of Parliament Ibrahim Abiriga who was on Friday evening killed alongside his brother and bodyguard Buga Saidi Butele.
At the heart and core of Dr Godfrey Kamese’s sermon at Praise Cathedral – Ntinda on Sunday was the need for an end to the ongoing killings that have continued to puzzle the citizenry and those charged with maintaining the public good that security is.
The Church pastors started the service with a moment of silence in honor of the assassinated law maker, and there after ushered believers into fervent intercession to pronounced order and peace upon the nation.
“We thank God for his grace and his mercy, the relevance of the church is in seasons and times like this,” the Pastor said.
Dr Godfrey Kamese urged the Church to arise, stand in the gap and call the nation back to God.
“Unless we do something about it, the devil will have an upper hand. It is time now for our relevance, the mandate is on you who are called by the name of the Lord,” he explained.
“It does not matter if you are honored/recognized or not. For as long as you carry the name of the Lord, you need to take position,” the Pastor said.
In his State of the Nation Address at the Kampala Serena Hotel on Wednesday, 6 June 2018, President Museveni blamed rising criminality, inundated with kidnaps and murders of mainly women, on ‘urban terrorism’, which he vowed to defeat.
The President said he rejected a proposal by a section of the security services to install roadblocks in Kampala, saying the solution lies in building “urban military intelligence capacity.”
He accused the United Nations peacekeeping forces and the Democratic Republic of Congo of providing sanctuary to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels.
“Rural based terrorism and banditry was totally defeated and we built rural military intelligence capacity…the ADF rebellion in Congo [is] preserved by the United Nations and the Congo government, but if they [ADF] came here, they would not go back in a standing position,” said Museveni.
“When you hear these stories from a far,” Pastor Godfrey Kamese said, “it does not count, but when it gets to you, then you will know.”
“Before it comes to you, let us fight expressly. Certain things do not go out except by prayer and fasting,” he said, later leading the church into a 14-days fast, expected to start June 14th.
editor@ugchristiannews.com
