By Ndawula Ronald
Jakana Nadduli suleiman was a 37 yesr old, well built , healthy bodied youth who had equally appealing looks and at best very handsome.
His sudden mysterious death has cast a dark cloud of embarrassment to NRM, luwero and Uganda as a nation.
Jakana like his father was a traditionalist, historical scholar and a proud man. In his short stint on life’s stage he had managed and turned out to be a bold, outspoken defender of human rights and an advocate of good governance and loathed nepotism.
Like all sons and daughters of leaders, he wished to follow his father’s parochial political footsteps not knowing it is now a preserve of a few people In Uganda.
His approach, trying to emulate his father using historical and biblical facts to put across his mind on a wide array of issues on ‘tik tok’ , YouTube and other social media platforms earned him immense following of a the exponentially growing number of dissenting voices across the globe.
Jakana like other antigovernment bloggers, and pundits, his inspiration was triggered by his father’s disappointment after being dropped from his Ministerial appointment and offered no alternative yet all his life was spent serving honorably the NRM regime since the early 1980’s bush days where Hajji Nadduli lost several kids and wives.
Having brought up by active political parents Jakana tried his luck to stand for elective positions in Nakaseke in the last election cycle but didn’t go through.
After that option Jakana realized that it was not possible under the current circumstances to vie for political office in Buganda region on his father’s NRM party card and as a shrewd politician he did the pragmatic move to tow the popular line of the voters in the region in order to position himself as the best people candidate in the next election cycle.
There was no way he could achieve this without being vocal and critical of the government his father helped to bring to power and served for that long as the message resonated well with his constituency.
This is not new to government just as Museveni, Amama Mbabazi , sejusa and Tumukunde turned against the government they were serving in the 1980 and other elections.
Am seriously wondering who in this world has decided to advise the NRM government that there’s a time when everyone in Uganda will agree and be only acceptable to their ideology!
Universal acceptance also failed in heaven in face of God the almighty when Lucifer and other Angels were unhonourably sent away and ended here to give us hard time after disobeying Allah!
Under the current arrangement and by implication, should Buganda also plot to decapitate and annihilate Kooki’s Kamuswaaga because he doesn’t agree with Kabaka?
How do you dare to dream that whoever doesn’t agree with you is an enemy and should be crushed, arrested or annihilated? Then what’s the purpose of mentoring and campaigning to convince and building systems which require both sides of the Isle?
It’s without doubt, subduing others by forceful submission, demolition and gagging dissent, imprisonment, murder as Majambere promised NUP approach employed by government has a dangerous boomerang effect and this modus operandi has failed since the beginning of time.
The Pharaohs of Egypt failed, Napoleon failed, Musolin failed, Hitler failed, saddam failed, Habyalimana lost, Goliath lost to David, Bashir failed, Amin lost and the list goes on.
With the simmering anger and hate that I see incubating across this country in these towns, and social platforms am worried even the nuclear powers will fail to stop and extinguish the after effects and tremors of its consequences.
The catalyst of this smoldering hate will be rampant poverty because of covid, Ebola and Ukraine-Russia war, impunity and tribalism.
Young men across the Buganda towns are whisked away in drones to no return and others flogged and tortured.
People call themselves “Abavandimwe” speak and make sectarian statements, issue hate and murder threats on all radio stations with impunity and they get away with it while in company of security officers without them holding any portfolio, yet the same words uttered by the opposite group end up being arrested for tribalism and other phony charges including sectarianism!
Ironically, innocent members of NRM are going to stop identifying themselves as such at burials and parties for fear of retribution from the rough, powerless and desperate public as they seek to pay back the violent acts of those who hold the gun and mistreat them.
Will security afford to protect all of us wherever we may be even on streets?
The dangerous trend of extrajudicial arrests, killings and impunity will plunge our dear Uganda in a bottomless abyss of doom if we don’t reverse the trend through dialogue, tolerance, sufferance and permissiveness.
If government doesn’t come out to explain and apologize for the circumstances of Jakana’s arrest and eventual death i invite the wounds, scars and spirit of this beautiful soul to come back to haunt the perpetrators of these heinous crimes in the near future as it did to Obote and Amin.
May Allah protect Hajji Nadduli’s family during this time of grief and solacement for there’s nothing comparable to the loss of a loved one in crude circumstances.
You played your part and surrender the rest to Allah.
May your soul rest in eternal peace Jakana S.Nadduli.
Till we meet.
Ndawula Ronald, the author is the former chairperson of Luwero district.
