The country on Sunday received the sad news of the passing of Parliament Speaker and Omoro County legislator Jacob Oulanyah following weeks of wild speculation over his health.

 As the country flies flags at half-mast in honour of the Speaker, we join the rest of the country, particularly the Acholi community where he stood tall as a leader, in mourning a gallant son who awed us with wit and exceptional oratory skills.   The reactions from leaders across the political divide and beyond Uganda speak volumes on the person Oulanyah was. He cut his political teeth as a person who spoke truth to power and oozed with ambition until he breathed his last.

 The circumstances surrounding his death are still shrouded in mystery even as we wait for the postmortem report. This is partly because the public has grown distrustful of the system in which we serve, especially those in government, because investigations into deaths and killings are hardly concluded.

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It does not also help matters that the family has a different view.  Mr Nathan Okori, the father of Speaker Oulanyah, said his son was “poisoned”, although the government refuted the claims pending an autopsy.

 We do not know what killed the legislator and we should not speculate until the experts that handled him speak out.

 We hope that the family, those close to the Oulanyah family, and the rest of the country process the incident, eventually for all living things, with sobriety and mourn peacefully.

The rate at which his health deteriorated, and the admission to overseas hospitals like many government officials before him, should also ring a bell on our priorities as a country.

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There was an uproar last month after it emerged the government had spent largely to fly the Speaker to the US. Whereas many wished Oulanyah a quick recovery, the incident kicked up debate on why our health system at home does not take care of such eventualities.

Oulanyah did not get the chance to sit at the helm of the legislative and budget allocation table. Maybe he would have guided better facilitation of the health sector. And that should be a critical issue when Parliament resumes; we should not spend the better part of the sessions debating social media insults when key sectors of the economy are on their deathbed. Many Ugandans cannot afford healthcare. And even those that can afford might not find the needed medication in the country. Let’s pump money into healthcare now that the monster has struck where it hurts most.

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 Oulanyah’s name will be etched in history as a servant who rose from humble beginnings to become the country’s third most powerful person.  Rest well, Ladit L’Okori Oulanyah.