Prime
Gen Lokech doesn’t need a hospital
Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- This tendency will do more harm than good to the memory of Gen Lokech.
This week it was revealed that the Gen Paul Lokech Memorial Hospital is being constructed in Pader District. Its construction coincided with the first memorial prayers organised by the district for the late former Deputy Inspector General of police.
Mr Samuel Akena, the organising committee secretary for the memorial prayer, said the hospital is in honour of Lokech’s longstanding desire to improve the health care system in the district.
Mr Norbert Mao, the minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, reportedly said a portrait of Gen Lokech should be placed at Gulu City Council Hall to celebrate his great works.
According to Mao, Lokech is like a great hunter whose exploits should be celebrated for years, just like the Acholi celebrated the bravery of past hunters.
With all due respect to the people of Pader, but Gen Lokech was an officer of Uganda’s national army. So, he was a soldier who happened to be an Acholi, not an Acholi soldier.
By this token, he should be honoured at a national level instead of a district one. This means the reported Shs2.9b that shall be spent on the memorial hospital, through the Paul Lokech Foundation, should re-routed to solving national problems such as the hunger in north-eastern Uganda, where a prolonged drought and rampant insecurity have left more than half a million facing starvation.
Again, the memorial hospital will likely be beset by the same problems that afflict other Ugandan hospitals such as a lack of specialists, drug stock outs, non-functional intensive care units, shortage of oxygen, power outages, run-down staff houses, water shortages compounded by growing corruption.
The persons who want the hospital in Pader have provincial outlooks and so believe in pork barrelling, or the utilisation of government funds for projects designed to win votes on a localised scale. This tendency will do more harm than good to the memory of Gen Lokech, who was a nationalist, not a regionalist.
ALSO READ: The childhood life of Gen Lokech
Also, although I’m partial to great leaders being memorialised, I believe it’s the good deeds of such leaders which embalm them in the collective memory of a given people. By that token, physical structures such as hospitals are superfluous.
To underline what I’m saying, let’s look at the death of Alexander the Great.
He was one of history’s greatest military conquerors, controlling much of the known world at the age of 32. Although being the king of ancient Macedonia for less than 13 years, he changed the course of history.
His empire stretched the all the way from India, through Egypt up to the northern border of Greece.
However, on his deathbed, he summoned his generals and said unto them, “I want my both hands to keep dangling out of my coffin because I want people to know that we came empty-handed in this world and we will go empty-handed.”
His famous last words were, “When you bury my body, don’t build any monument and keep my hands outside so that the world knows that the person who won the whole world had nothing in his hand while dying.”
Alexander knew that his legacy was not limited to the Greeks, but belonged to the world. This is why he rejected monuments, which have a fixed geographical location, in favour of a lesson which would belong to the ages and infuse all peoples with a sense of purpose.
In this vein, Gen Lokech doesn’t need a hospital in his name. Instead, let his deeds live on through oral tradition and historical text to inspire us to follow his example in leaving the world a better place than we found it.
Mr Phillip Matogo is a professional copywriter
[email protected]
