MP Cerinah Nebanda’s Christmas in a crypt

Yes, they can conduct any test you want for the required answers but the place has been ignored for so long this could hardly be the venue for receiving a high profile client.

The people of Butaleja will forever associate Christmas with the unseemly death of their energetic youthful legislator Cerinah Nebanda who in a short spell in the House captured the imagination of many with her optimism and idealism that things could change for the better.

Nebanda arrived in Parliament as an NRM MP after defeating Dorothy Hyuha, the NRM deputy Secretary General. It goes without saying that big money has come to rule politics in Uganda and the stakes only get bigger. While Hyuha, a Cabinet minister was no shrinking violet, her opponent “Nebanda oil” or mafutamingi the millionaire class matched her pound for pound for the affection of the voters.

I have been in a few offices where civil servants are fielding Nebanda’s calls on a number of subjects close to her constituent’s hearts. The President at her funeral wake acknowledged Nebanda was on his case about the state of dispensaries in her rural district. On the issue of the day- oil, Nebanda and a coterie of legislators mostly from the ruling NRM, have been a sore note in the government’s positions in Parliament.

The Government wants to retain direct ministerial authority over oil; a position consistent with our common law traditions but at the same time create a large specialised agency- the Petroleum Authority with broad sector oversight. These seem like intellectual disputes but in Uganda have become a referendum on what critics from both sides of the political divide describe as the perils of increasingly one man rule.

After Nebanda died under mysterious circumstances, rumour mills and social media went amok on the cause of her death. Quickly, the discussion moved on to whether Uganda had the capacity to pinpoint the cause of Nebanda’s death before her remains are interred in Butaleja. I went to a modern day version of a science polytechnic, so there is hardly a shortage of scientists, chemists, doctors and engineers on my speed dial. The clinicians weighed in first. All causes discussed so far were general and had to be eliminated one by one. If a foreign substance was suspected, the case had to be referred to a microbiologist, tissue specialist or some more advanced tests.

A highly trained pathologist at Mulago hospital after recusing himself from participating in Nebanda activities then hit the nail on the head as he always does matter of factly. The final answer as early as a few days ago lay with the chief government chemist. Nebanda’s autopsy would require further tests. The problem is that these tests required helium which had ran out at the government chemist’s six months ago. I have been a client of the office of the chief government chemist housed in crumbling infrastructure opposite the now infamous Ministry of Public Service.

Yes, they can conduct any test you want for the required answers but the place has been ignored for so long this could hardly be the venue for receiving a high profile client like the late MP Nebanda. From my dear friend the pathologist, he had the final answer that came close to the clinician that the final answer was the correct answer. Verdict impossible within the borders of Uganda.

Many of my doctor and medical professional friends who are exhausted and irritated when I heckle them on abandoning patient care: one of our classmates who went as far as becoming an airtime dealer in Mbarara has began writing back informing me that since government chose to humiliate them after their last strike in 1996 with continuously poor pay, they have been on a go-slow. I remember running into a former State Scholar in the company of his classmate now MP Dr Michael Bayigga with “wornout” shoes simply because the Minister of Public Service at the time Amanya Mushega did not think it important to hire doctors that financial year.

Go-slow means see something-say nothing. It is of course little surprise that the biggest whiners who go abroad each time they catch a cold are responsible for the derelict state of affairs of the medical professionals. Very few are willing to be “triaged” in public institutions like Mulago yet the care is there, especially if you don’t run into a frustrated medical professional living in a nearby slum for want of a better word to say where the toilets flush half the time and overflow the other half of the time.

The saga is in its early stages but the “Police-state” described in these pages as the strangulation of whatever few institutions left is now strangling a hapless medic Dr Sylvestre Onzivua, a brother to my law school classmate State Prosecutor Gilbert Alule for seeking the final and conclusive answer: that cannot be found in the broken facilities we have here.

Unlike the rest like Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, Onzivua does not have parliamentary privileges; the Speaker should have delivered her convoy for a day to ship these remains out of the country. But if a rock star like Ms Nabakooba can overrule Dr Onzivua it is not enough to say the country is on the edge and probably staring down a cliff.

Mr Ssemogerere, an attorney and social entrepreneur, practises law in New York.
kssemoge@gmail.com