Uganda, April 6 -- I argued last week that the biggest failure of our 1986 rulers is, by far, the failure to engineer a political community called Uganda, one to which we are attached by dint of a shared sentiment of comradeship and horizontal solidarity. That is what a nation and nationhood mean.

This sense of common belonging and joint fellowship must necessarily transcend our diverse social identities, the different cultural and religious affiliations we identify with, and our varied regional, linguistic and ethnic origins.

This model of the modern nation-state has inherent flaws and fundamental weaknesses, no doubt, but it has for long been the best from the menu of flawed options available or imaginable and a largely preferred choi...