Uganda’s First Lady and Minister of Education, Janet Kataaha Museveni has raised a number of questions about the brutal murder of Arua Municipality MP, Ibrahim Abiriga.
During Parliament’s special Sunday session to pay tribute to Abiriga, Janet said Abiriga was not only an NRM diehard, but also patriotic.
Below is Janet’s abridged moving tribute to the fallen lawmaker;
What sign is this? That serving a country with passion and dedication is a crime. What is this message? Abiriga spread love, understanding and good will right from Arua to Kampala.
His actions, speeches, his work always portrayed love; the jokes and laughter even with children.
Therefore, indeed all Ugandans loved him as others have said, across the whole country and now, all are in shock and in mourning.
But that among the same people that there are those who could have the capacity to hate Abiriga so much to the extent of mercilessly murdering him in cold blood clearly shows us that the direction we are taking is regrettable.
And I can’t stop hoping that his death really becomes the mirror that all of us will now hold to ourselves, to search our hearts and ask ourselves questions whether our daily work, speech in any way could have contributed anything to this hatred that is bringing these merciless murders in our country.
While Abiriga spread love and understanding, there are many of us who spread hatred and poisonous stories that truly poison large sections of the society.
In time, that poison goes and spills over as lava from a volcano and it runs through communities, destroying everything in its way. That is how we get people who may not have known Abiriga as a person, but they knew him in yellow, his desires to serve his country, the party he serves with dedication and become just inspired to kill him in such a way because of that, to willingly serve his people with patriotism.
Is it possible that that is why our country has remained so backward for such a long time for generations? Do we inspire hatred so much that there is no room for making a critical departure from the past? Would we rather destroy the attempt to develop our backward communities so we go back to square one so that our children find the same chaos we found?
I pray that this evil act raises of murder of Abiriga really causes these critical questions for all of us at this time we get answers.
We can’t and shouldn’t ignore that this murder causes to the family but also the extended family of Ugandans who loved him across the country because he had a unique character who loved Ugandans, it doesn’t matter whether they loved him or not.
While it may be easy and it is okay to blame Government, because they have the responsibility to protect people, we can blame it for what it may and might not have done, but we must remember all of us that we all have a responsibility of building this country and leading our people in the direction we ought to go.
