The recent break-in at the Bank of Uganda, in which laptops and other items were stolen, has led to the arrest, charging, and remand of several suspects, including police officers. According to well-placed sources, this incident was only a matter of time, given the entrenched extortion and informal payments around the bank’s Kampala Road premises.
Officers deployed there are supposed to keep boda-boda cyclists and taxis away, yet stages openly operate. Boda-boda riders reportedly pay around Shs 1,000 per trip, while in the evenings the area turns into a taxi stage where each fully loaded taxi pays at least Shs 2,000.
Analysts argue that this routine collection of illicit fees created a culture of impunity and normalized corruption among some officers, eroding professionalism and accountability. In such an environment, they say, the leap from daily extortion to direct involvement in theft from the bank itself was tragically predictable, making the reported robbery less a shock and more a symptom of a long-festering problem.
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