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The newly commissioned UPDF Junior officers on Friday 21st April, 2023 completed a one-month intensive Post Cadet Ideological Orientation training course at the Oliver Reginald Tambo School of Leadership, Kaweweta in Nakaseke District.

Officiating at the pass-out ceremony, the Commandant Military Police Maj. Gen. Don Nabaasa who represented the Commander Land Force Lt. Gen. Kayanja Muhanga noted that the security of Uganda is still calm only that terrorism, cattle rustling, general criminality and effects of bad weather continue to threaten national security.

He added that ADF and Al-Shabab elements still pose security threats in Eastern DRC and Somalia respectively. He also noted that the situation in the Karamoja subregion under 3^RD Division and 5^TH Division is normalising as cattle rustling is reducing and a number of rustlers have been demobilized and others arraigned in courts of law. He congratulated the UPDF/FARDC under Operation Shujaa in Eastern DRC and ATMIS in Somalia for a job well done.

He called upon all graduands to vouch for Pan-African integration for improved security and economic status. “We have a lot of hope in you young officers who will soon take over leadership responsibilities of the UPDF to move the country forward. Defending the sovereignty of a country is a do or die and requires solid ideological grounding,” Maj Gen Nabasa emphasized.

Speaking at the same function, Col. Okei Rukogota representing Maj. Gen. Henry Matsiko, the Chief Political Commissar (CPC) noted that participants were being trained to take over the reigns of the UPDF as the current leaders gradually retire. “This achievement is yet another great milestone in the growth of this centre of leadership training,” he said.

He called on everyone in their various capacities to engage in ideological training and defeat the enemies of peace. According to the Commandant of the and development.

The Deputy Director General Internal Security Organisation Lt Col. Immy Katabaazi advised graduands to always put ideology at the forefront of whatever they undertake to do. “To an officer of the army the guiding element is ideology, without ideology any force would be a disaster,” noted Lt Col. Katabaaazi.

Col Justus K Rukundo and the group of 485 participants, 47 of them female, started the training course on 21st March 2023. “The aim of the course was to impart ideological knowledge to enable the freshly commissioned junior officers be change agents in their respective units and formations.”

He encouraged the graduating participants to always aim for the greater good of self and society, beginning the change they wish to have in society by changing themselves first.

Participants were taken through a number of training programmes that included skill at arms, body physical fitness training, ideological clarity and consciousness training at the individual, institutional and national level and Kiswahili language, among others.