71-year Oola Gaudensio Lakana, a resident of Wii-Lacic Village, Paidong Parish, Bobi Sub-County, Tochi County, Omoro District, a Coffee farmer and chairperson of Bobi Paidong Coffee Growers Society with 80 members said his father planted about an acre of Coffee in the 1960s and it was doing well.
According to Muzee Oola, his father motivated him as a youth, and he has since loved coffee farming. “My father was a proud coffee farmer; it was low scale, and the market was not as easy to get as now,” he narrated.
The jolly old man who thanked President Yoweri Museveni Kaguta for stabilizing the entire Uganda and supporting peace in northern Uganda said President Museveni Kaguta brought back his childhood coffee-growing nostalgia after the war.
“I fled this home for a long time and over the years we lost my father’s coffee to the war, actually I was in Bwayele, in Kiryandongo district with my family during the Lord Resistance Army Insurgency but when I returned immediately, I started planting coffee in bits by 2008”. He added.
Currently, all his biological brothers, Olanya Kakoma and Kilama Paul all have a coffee plantation of about an acre and they are planning to plan more when the rain falls this year.
Oola has aggressively motivated his Bobi community members into coffee farming and currently, the cooperatives (Bobi- Paidong Coffee Growers) he heads have 80 members with the biggest farmer in their group having 27 acres of coffee plantations.
He also encouraged other people in the region not to wait and start it immediately because he is annoyed he just has 2 acres.
Coffee Market:
“I just have 2 acres but I’m adding more gardens when the rain falls- the truth is coffee has money, now they telephone us the coffee farmers to check if we have ready coffee beans to sell. The buyers come and get it from home where currently they are paying UGX,7,000 per acre”. He noted.
He also told this reporter that he was able to send his children to school with ease, with his two-acre garden, where in a year he could get about over UGX 70 million.
Call for support from the Government:
The Coffee Growers Society led by Muzee Oola currently has over 1 million coffee seedlings in their nursery beds and is calling for government support in giving them water pumps to support them in irrigation they also called on the Chief Operation Wealth Creation Coordinator, Retired Gen. Salim Saleh to give them a tractor so that his cooperatives can more miracle and remain one of the testimonies that Coffee is viable and productive in Acoli subregion.
Lamwaka Catherine, the Omoro Woman Member of parliament said that she has ever visited the coffee farmers’ groups and confirmed that the Omoro district is ready to be a model in coffee planting in the Acoli sub-region as of the current plan to revolutionize coffee growing at the household level by Government.
In his 44th Tarehe-Sita message to Ugandans, Retired but not tired Gen. Salim Saleh, the Chief Operation Wealth Creation Coordinator assured Acoli sub-region that the support to revolutionize coffee farming in Acoli is not only to encourage growing coffee but also support long-term value addition enterprises in the region and is part of the ‘economic bush revolution’ he shall live up to before going back to Kampala.
“I’m a disciple of Musevenomics, not a messiah and in total agreement with my Commander in -Chief on this. Miracles shall happen in Northern Uganda because Northern Uganda shall plan more coffee since they have land, markets, and mechanization is what I shall do”. OWC Chief Coordinator added in his 44th Tarehe-Sita message televised to Ugandans on National Television.
Personalities like Oola Gaudensio Lakana and his Bobi- -Paidong Coffee Growers Society in Omoro breathe life into the aspiration and dream of Musevenomics disciples like Gen. Salim Saleh operationalizing transformational agenda for northern Uganda after the decade insurgency.
Ends
