In 1986, at the start of his presidency, President Yoweri Museveni made a stopover at a fuel station in Kawempe to get his car tyre fixed and noticed that apart from tyre repairs and re-fuelling vehicles, there weren’t other services offered. When he next appeared at a public function he recounted his story having waited over an hour without refreshments offered to clients. He then advised fuel station and garage owners to establish restaurants so that when clients make stopovers they can refresh and quench thirst.

The April shouting matches by MPs over steep rises in commodity prices including petroleum products, building materials, and everyday basic necessities, perhaps, signaling the harsh economic times ahead belies the hypocrisy and shallowness among Uganda’s elites.

On Friday, the short-lived Speaker of parliament Jacob L’Okori Oulanyah took his final journey of no return to Ayom-lony village, Lalogi sub-county, Omoro district twenty days since his demise at the University of Washington Medical, a cancer centre in Seattle where he had been taken early February with terminal illness. It has also been a period of truly national and colourful mourning, an outpouring of emotions, paying tributes to and celebrations for a short life lived fully. Many will remember the nicknames Oulanyah gave them as acquaintances.

My first meeting with Jacob Oulanyah, the deceased former Speaker of the 11th Parliament, was 1987 when as a teacher at Trinity College Nabbingo l had accompanied my students to an academic seminar at Kololo secondary school where he was a senior six student. After the seminar, Oulanyah told me that he had earlier attended Dr Obote college Boroboro, Lira and Layibi college, Gulu, both prominent schools then. He was member Kololo S.S.