Beatings and an emergency operation of 1990 caused Oulanyah’s death – Nobert Mao

“I knew, of course that due to the beatings in Makerere of 1990, his spleen had to been cut out in an emergency operation at Mulago. Now when you don’t have a spleen, you are prone to multiple infections because those are some of the organs that deal with the germs that we all carry around. They cleanse the body and so on. And many of his internal organs had been traumatized as result of [cutting out his spleen due to] that beating on 10th December 1990.

Hon Nobert Mao, the president general of the Democrtatic Party (DP) and close friend to fallen speaker Rt Hon Jacob Oulanyah, has said that Oulanyah’s beatings of 1990 caused his eventual death last weekend.

Mao was referring to Oulanyah’s university days when he led a student’s strike (with Mao) against the removal of student allowances by the new National Resistance Army (NRA) government in 1990.

Oulanyah was the leader of the strike as the guild speaker, together with Mao who was the guild president. During the army’s efforts to quell the strike, President Museveni’s army, only four years in power by then, shot two students dead and brutally heat several other students As it turns out, one of worst beaten was Jacob Oulanyah.

Oulanyah ended up being hospitalized at Mulago for several days. The injuries from the beatings were so severe that it was incumbent that he gets an emergency operation in which, according to Mao, his spleen was cut out.

Mao said this, while giving one of the foremost seminal tributes to the fallen speaker on the Capital Gang on Saturday morning. He narrated what Oulanyah’s doctor told him and the team that went to Seattle to see the bedridden Oulanyah:

“The doctor told us that the medical team thought that they could possibly harvest cells from someone who is genetically related to Jacob, and then modify those cells in a lab and transplant them into Jacob to tackle the cancer cells. This is why Jacob was taken to that particular hospital. Many patients have undergone that kind of treatment there and recovered.

However, the doctor told us that unfortunately, Jacob’s illness is (sic) so advanced and his organs are (sic) in no position to take the kind of treatment regime that would revive him. And I have to let you know that many of us didn’t know the details of Jacob’s illness.

“And I am a person who believes that I should talk about what I know. Even as a very close friend, I actually never heard from Jacob telling me that he had cancer.

“I knew, of course that due to the beatings in Makerere of 1990, his spleen had to been cut out in an emergency operation at Mulago. Now when you don’t have a spleen, you are prone to multiple infections because those are some of the organs that deal with the germs that we all carry around. They cleanse the body and so on. And many of his internal organs had been traumatized as result of [cutting out his spleen due to] that beating on 10th December 1990.”