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Gender minister Betty Amongi said in a Saturday newspaper interview that she is jumping from slippery Oyam south constituency for Lira city woman MP job because she has a duty to take care of Uganda’s founding president Milton Obote’s legacy which the former 1st lady Miria Kalule Obote has failed to do enough to preserve and protect.
Amongi says that being 86 years old, Miria has become too frail to shoulder the responsibility of being an effective wife in the home of such big man in Lira.
She says there are a lot of people from across the world who like to travel to Obote’s Lira home for a pirglimage of some sort and it’s very demeaning and ashaming of the Obote legacy when they find the home in a sorry state because of absence of a functional spousal figure.
She says she can play that spousal figure role in her father-in-law’s home more effectively if she becomes the Lira city woman MP as opposed to serving from Oyam which is far.
The journalist asked her why she thinks she can only be an effective spouse propagating Obote’s legacy when she is an MP and Amongi was unable to render any intelligent answers to that question.
She says that she often gets calls from people from allover the world wanting to come to see Obote’s Lira home only to realise there is a big vacuum resulting from Miria’s advanced age and permanent absence in that home.
Amongi says she was shocked recently in Adis Ababa when many people became interested in her as a member of the Ugandan delegation after realising that she was Obote’s daughter-in-law.
She says they showed her the room where Obote and others sat in 1963 to form the OAU which later became African Union. She says all this made her to realise how important Obote’s legacy was hence the need to protect it by seeking to become Lira woman MP. She says she has more responsibility to protect Obote’s legacy via his Lira home more than even his son Jimmy Akena, her husband.
Amongi, who doesn’t get along very well with some of Obote’s other sons, explains that to be an effective woman in that Lira home, she has to become Lira city woman MP because she has always been a political leader in Lango since 2001 when she first became Lira city woman MP. After one term as Apac woman MP, Amongi went for Oyam south MP seat where she disorganized Isha Otto, a fellow UPC. She has served there for 20 years and a lot of people are convinced she would struggle to explain what her leadership and longevity in office has benefited Oyam.
Amongi who was raised by poor parents who were primary school teachers in Oyam, says that all Ugandans need to support her to win the Lira city race because preserving Obote’s legacy is for the good of all Ugandans, and not just his Lango co-ethnics.
