On Tuesday, Daily Monitor ran a pithy front-page headline: 'Museveni masks lockdown.'

For the perceptive reader who had keenly watched/listened to Museveni's address, the Daily Monitor headline delivered two core messages, which both created enormous confusion prompting Mr Museveni and his handlers to make a follow-up address the following evening.

The most absurd bit of the latter message was that the masks were to come out of one producer and available in two weeks to more than 30 million Ugandans.

No Ugandan manufacturer has the capacity for such a huge output, in fact, perhaps no producer in the world can churn out more than 30 million masks in two weeks.

However, unlike other political leaders around the world who too have to make do with tentative information and experiment with unclear policies here and there given the uncertain situation, Mr Museveni has a few problems peculiar to him, which make it difficult for him to communicate clearly and persuasively.