By Spy Uganda
Yesterday Minister of Health, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng read a report about fallen Speaker Jacob Oulanyah’s death saying he succumbed to cancer and multiple organ failure.
According to Dr. Aceng, in 2019, the late developed a swelling in the neck, prompting him to seek medical attention in Germany where the swelling was removed, and later diagnosed with cancer.
READ ALSO: RIP: Legislators Eulogize Oulanyah As Mentor, Peacemaker, Patriot & Man Of Integrity
Something that however attracted legislators’ attention is when she said the above health issues came after the speaker lost his spleen while he was in Makerere when he had a splenectomy following a 1990 students riot where he was brutally battered by brutal security personnel of the ruling NRM government.
For our dear readers knowing about ‘spleen’ for the first time, this is a small organ inside your left rib cage, just above the stomach. It’s part of the lymphatic system (which is part of the immune system). The spleen stores and filters blood and makes white blood cells that protect you from infection.
So, Oulanyah since that strike lacked an organ that manufactures blood cells – white, red, and so on and of course, that resulted in challenges with stem cells which had a poor immune response.
Story Of 1990 Makerere University Students’ Strike
There is a couple of theories rotating around this strike one of them being that a guild constitution enforced by the Ministry of Education was being rejected by students led by guild president Norbert Mao and the elimination of allowances was also at the heart of student dissatisfaction but also during this period, Uganda Police allegedly shot and killed two students; Thomas Okema and Tom Onyango on December 10, 1990, which caused ‘fire’ in the University.
It is from the above background that students decided to stage a sit-in strike at Freedom Square to protest the above something that saw police then [reportedly] using live bullets rather than tear gas to disperse the students.
Now, at this very moment, one of the students, Jacob Oulanyah [fallen speaker] was shot and was seen writhing in great pain on the ground after being battered by the same forces. Oulanyah was the guild’s spokesperson in the student government led by Nobert Mao.
According to Oulanyah’s close friends, his sight and spleen were both harmed and was hospitalized in Mulago till his full recovery but unfortunately, the effects of brutality meted on him by gunmen during this strike surfaced in 2022 when he was hospitalized in Seatle, the USA where he ended his calendar. RIP Comrade!
