In early September, Praise Aloikin Opoloje, Norah Kobusingye, and Kemitoma
Kyenzibo were arrested and sent to Luzira prison for staging a nude protest
near Parliament.
With parts of their bodies paint with
the colors on the Uganda flag, the young ladies were demanding the resignation
of the Speaker of Parliament, Anita Annet Among over alleged corruption at the Parliament
of Uganda.
While in detention, the “girls” won admiration
from a section of Ugandans. However, some criticized them because they chose to
go half-naked or nude in their protest against the opulence of the Speaker and
others at Parliament.
Some have questioned their bravery, others have wondered whether
they had nothing to lose by participating in protests like the “Walk to Parliament
“.
The three have since come out of prison
but remained silent about why they chose to expose their bodies or indecency as
claimed by their critics.
One of them, Aloikin Praise Opoloje, has since broken and explained
why she is not about to keep quiet and remain comfortable with injustices in
society.
Born in 1999 in a peasant family setting in Eastern Uganda’s Paliisa
district, Opologe said she has a lived experience how corruption is negatively impacting
communities in the villages where she hails.
////Cue In “Palisa is such a forgotten district…..
Cue Out…. to sit are set in English”///
“By the time I could understand the word corruption, I bet I had seen more
than one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine forms of it,” shared Opoloje at
the just concluded Human Rights Convention 2024.
. If there is anything that has bothered Opoloje back in Palisa and elsewhere
in the country, it is the poor services at health facilities. “I cannot
remember a day in Palisa where I visited the outpatient department and it
functioned seamlessly” she said.
////Cue In “We have had no good roads…….
Cue Out …..this small town”///
/ Opoloje, who is in her final year at Makerere University’s Law School
says she had big plans of studying hard, get a good job and run out of the
small town in Palisa
“And carry your mum along with you because this small town
had weighed down on us,” she shared.
However, as fate would have it, she got pregnant during her third year at
Makerere University.
The pregnancy dictated that she returns to Palisa and more
so to the ill-equipped hospital where she shared wards with other expectant mothers
from the impoverished communities.
“I had to go back home because that
was the only place I had to give birth from. I found myself back to this small tow I had
been running away from”
////Cue In “That day 20th August…..
Cue out …. And yet they lucked practical skills“///
While she had become a mother of baby girl, she would endure the pain and
agony of delivering a baby in poorly resourced facility labor ward.
“I laid there for 45 minutes without snatchers to stich me. And when my
mum asked the midwife if she could do something about it, this lady said what do
expect us to do?” Opoloje narrated.
///Cue in “ And this midwife seemed to….
Cue Out…be part of the solution”///
She said her experience has taught her that no matter how you want to rub
away from the problem, it will catch up with you. “Injustice in Uganda is such
a fair giver, everyone get their fair share”
///Cue In “It does not matter if you are……
Cue Out …. If it is not me, why should I participate“///
“I have come to realize that everyone has to lose under injustices. So I cannot
wait to lose something before I realize that. I’m afraid of what we could
become if no one does something about it” she remarked.
Opoloje has been arrested twice and remanded to Luzira prison but on each
of those occasions, she says her spirit has been strengthened despite the stereotypes.
Some have claimed that she get paid to engage in those demonstration, others
said she was seeking cheap popularity.
Not all says Opoloje who says she choose
nonviolence in her pursuit for good leadership based on accountability and rule
of law.
“We have had years of dedication of men and women who have struggled in
their different capacities to do something about it. We have still had women
die in labor. We have had young people shot in the backs while matching
peacefully. And I ask myself, how much worse could it get if everyone though
that that responsibility belongs to someone else?”
///Cue In “How many more mothers…….
Cue out supposed to be accountable accountable” ///
While Opoloje and other young women have taken to non-violence in their campaigns,
she says one need to develop a hard skin similar to what activists like Dr.
Kiiza Besigye have gone through.
Most often,
some have alleged that these activists have been compromised by foreign forces.
“Before I got where I’m today, I used to ask the same questions. I don’t care
how much someone pays me. I cannot wake up and put my line on the line for
anything.
She said the society out there hardly views social justice and human rights
activists as ordinary people. And that we don’t realize that for every
compliments that we gives them, there are ten thousand expectations on their
backs.
“They expect them to things in a specific way. They ask why you marched
nude? You could have done it in better way. We don’t realize how exhausting
that can be on those people”
