President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who is also the Commander-In-Chief of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), has on Tuesday commissioned 774 officer cadets who successfully completed their one-year training course at the Basic Military Training School- Kaweweta. The commissioned officers belong to intake 18 of year 2023/24 and out of the 774 students, 28 were drawn from Tanzania and Mali. During the commissioning, President Museveni congratulated the new officers for successfully completing their training course. The President explained that the commissioned officers were taken through a tough course and were exposed to the combined elements of warfare so that they get a good preliminary exposure about fighting.
“In our training here, we try to expose all the trainees to the realities of combat. In the past they used to separate phases of training but when we discussed we decided that at an early stage, the officer should be exposed to the multidimensional nature of warfare, that is why I hear that you went to Kalama for a combined arms exercise. That is what I advised them. I said let them know from the very beginning the wider combination of arms,” he said. Gen. Museveni also cautioned the officers to stop regarding the army as a job but a responsibility to defend a country. “We started as student movement in the 1960s, then when Idi Amin came, we became a resistence movement and during that time Mwalimu Nyerere was supporting us and it was easy to support us because we didn’t ask for a salary,” he noted. President Museveni also pledged to continue enhancing the welfare of the army officers in terms of free housing, free education for the children of the soldiers, health, among others.
