Fare-thee-well Oulanyah

The Former Speaker of the 11th Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah will be laid to rest today at his ancestral home in Lalogi Village, Omoro District after close to three weeks of mourning.

Oulanyah succumbed to a recurring cancer of lymphoma on March 19 in Seattle, USA, a killer disease he had battled with silently for the last two years, which were dotted with several hospital visits locally and internationally.

Mourner after mourner, has eulogised him as a great debater, orator, sportsman, kind-hearted, among other good attributes of a great leader. His death also united Ugandans from different walks of political shades.

However, reality check will set in today as his casket swathed in national flag colours, is being lowered into a grave, his final resting place of no return.

The former Speaker who had hardly spent nine months in office following his hard fought win, will be remembered as an accomplished open-minded politician, who crossed from opposition Uganda Peoples’ Congress to the ruling National Resistance Movement in 2006, from where he grew to positions of leadership in Parliament.

As we put Oulanyah to his final resting place, he leaves behind with us a number of life lessons to learn from especially in the area of shunning corruption and time management by public offices among other good attributes he possessed.

Let’s also honour Oulanyah’s legacy by implementing the pledges we have since come up with during his mourning.

For example, the education trust fund to which well-wishers will contribute resources to ensure that the hundreds of learners mainly from Northern Uganda that the deceased Speaker was supporting, continue uninterrupted with their studies. The education trust fund is also aimed at supporting Oulanyah’s biological children to acquire an education to the highest level of their choice.

The said education trust fund is being spearheaded by Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo and Norbert Mao, the DP president, who were both close friends to Oulanyah.

Many times, when people die, friends, family and even the government, come out to pledge to continue educating the deceased’s children. But we have since watched in disbelief how the said good pledges have never been fulfilled.

The practice has been that once the burial is done, all the mourners return to business as usual, abandoning the immediate families of the deceased to toil alone.

So let’s reform and ensure that the pledges made in memory of the late Speaker, whom we say we loved so much, are implemented and who knows, we may have another Speaker from his biological lineage or even the hundreds of children he has been supporting.

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