A world leader who is not afraid to openly criticise powerful institutions and feels he does not get enough credit for his successes?

No, not Donald Trump, but Uganda’s very own Yoweri Museveni.

The East African nation’s president treated delegates at the recent Uganda Oil & Gas Summit in Kampala to a little vignette, illustrating his take on how Uganda’s oil industry sputtered to life — and his own role in its development.

The British began searching for oil in Uganda in the 1920s but gave up in 1956, despite visible seepages.

“They said it had all been cooked away with just the remnants left. I read all the files myself,” claimed Museveni, who came to power in 1986 after toppling Milton Obote.

“Shell and BP came to me, saying there was potential. But I said, ‘I don’t know, let me find out and you come back in a couple of weeks.’

“I started looking for people who knew about oil and they told me there a was only this one guy in the Bank of Uganda, an economist from Ghana who had once handled petroleum imports. And I thought to myself, this is serious.”

Museveni continued: “I told Shell and BP to go away, as I had no one on my side and so couldn’t negotiate. I told the Ministry of Minerals to seek experts in geophysics and grants for our people to go abroad for petroleum studies, which they did.

“Then Shell and BP suddenly stopped taking an interest — you must be careful about these people, they are very opportunistic — and told me to go to Russia, which is where they were also headed.

“I told them, okay, bye-bye, and instructed my own people to restart the search and they eventually found the structures.”

They may have found plenty of oil, but very little has been done to date to monetise it, as the government remains at a standstill with Total, Tullow Oil and CNOOC International over key issues relating to the planned Lake Albert oilfield development.

"Even me," he added, "I have since become some kind of small expert in this oil business.”

If he can get the trio of oil companies to, finally, take a final investment decision on the Tilenga and Kingfisher developments and also successfully negotiate the neighbour Tanzania over the planned pipeline to the Indian Ocean, then Museveni will surely get all the credit he feels he deserves.

Weekly

Museveni takes the credit