Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni yesterday lashed out at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for not respecting collective decisions taken by African leaders, and suggested that African countries should review their membership of the ICC treaty.

Museveni was speaking at Uganda’s 52nd Independence celebrations at Kololo in Kampala, Uganda.

The ceremony was graced by several regional presidents, including Paul Kagame, South Sudan’s Salva Kiir, and Tanzanian’s Jakaya Kikwete.

Cabinet Secretary for Transport and Infrastructure Micheal Kamau represented Kenya, while the premier of Ethiopia was represented by his Minister and Legal Adviser, Dr Fassil Hahom.

Museveni said the African Union (AU) Assembly of Heads of State resolved that no African sitting President should be summoned by that court, and yet the ICC this week summoned Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta over alleged crimes committed in the 2007 post election violence in Kenya.

Describing ICC as a biased instrument of post-colonial hegemony, Museveni called on African countries to review their status with the ICC treaty.

"The problems that occurred in Kenya in 2007 and that happen in other African countries are, first and foremost, ideological,” Museveni said.

"For International Criminal Court to handle them as just legal matters, demonstrates their level of shallowness. My view is that, at the next summit, African countries should review their membership to the ICC treaty.”

‘No value in ICC’

The Ugandan President said ICC had turned out not to be the value addition product that many African leaders had thought it to be, but a biased instrument of post-colonial hegemony.

President Museveni paid tribute to the late Tanzanian leader, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, for the support he gave the revolutionary struggle in Uganda that, he noted, laid a foundation for the peace, stability and development Uganda is experiencing today.

He highlighted that the entire Uganda is peaceful for the first time in 114 years after disarming the Karamojong and the defeat of rebel leader Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Museveni attributed suffering in North Africa and the Middle East to "mistakes by certain global players.”

"These global players are always in cahoots with incapable puppets. It is that permutation that is, mainly, responsible for these tragedies of human haemorrhage, destruction of social and economic capital, and loss of development time in those unfortunate lands,” Museveni said.