Photo: YouTune
“Looking back at my life so far, I can only put my forehead to the ground and say THANK YOU LORD for the greatest gift, LIFE.
As a young boy, I never imagined going half the distance I have gone but reaching this age teaches me that God keeps us alive for a purpose bigger than just existing and then exiting,” said Bobi Wine aka Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi on his 41st birthday.
Many times, Bobi has shown that he is built for a higher purpose.
Take the 2021 elections, for instance.
Bobi showed Ugandans, and the watching world, that leadership is about two things: inspiration and example.
By inspiration, he roused a nation exhausted with the Museveni junta’s murderous maladministration. He did so as he, and his followers, were harassed and battered offline.
Online, president Museveni, through Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), wrote to Google requesting it to shut down at least 14 social media accounts broadcasting Bobi’s campaign rallies.
When this attempt fell flat, cyber-attacks on Bobi’s accounts resulted in Map Media, Ghetto Media and Ekyooto International being hacked.
An ordinary man would have retreated with his tail between his legs, but Bobi is no ordinary man.
For an example of his leadership, let’s look back to a debate on the NBS-TV show Frontline; held a couple of years before the 2021 General Elections.
It wasn’t a classic debate.
When I say ‘classic’ I mean in the tradition of Cicero’s Catiline orations. Or other ancients whose rhetorical flourishes we quote centuries after they were made.
However, it was a knock-down-drag-out affair.
Both Andrew Mwenda and Bobi fought their corners with the tenacity of two men in the grip of a messianic need to prove the other wrong.
Before this debate, not many Ugandans had ever rated Bobi as a debater.
So Ugandans were pleasantly surprised with his strong showing against Mwenda.
His words dovetailed with a lilting voice to score some major talking points.
He left Mwenda out for the count with some hard-hitting verbal blows, too.
Mwenda was reduced to being disruptive and intolerant, even as he accused Hon. Kyagulanyi of being disruptive and intolerant.
To be clear, Bobi Wine was a revelation.
His clarity of expression belied the general confusion of mind which seems to characterize many of our political actors.
To all who watched, Bobi won that debate.
Mwenda seemed to think so too, and thus demanded a rematch…and, more.
“I went to NUP to register as a member, pick forms to be nominated as candidate for both party leadership and party presidential candidate! I will be running against Bobi Wine for both positions,” Mwenda declared.
Through this, Mwenda hoped to expose Bobi’s supposed feet of clay as a leader.
Also, Mwenda was probably hoping to exemplify an African proverb which says, “A flea can trouble a lion more than a lion can trouble a flea”.
However, Bobi had moved onto to bigger game and set his sights on Gen. Museveni.
This brings us back to the 2021 elections.
The world watched in horror as Gen. Museveni gunned down Ugandans, hoping to cow Bobi Wine into submission.
Instead, Bobi Wine swept the polls as helicopter gunships menacingly charted the lengths and breadths of the sapphire Kampala skies and soldiers were deployed everywhere.
Every Ugandan knows that in spite of the intimidation and fear Gen. Museveni spread, no amount of force could stop Bobi.
True, the vote was stolen but Gen. Museveni had been put on notice that his days are indeed numbered.
We thank Bobi for his courage and leadership and wish he enjoys more than another 41 more years on this earth to ensure, by example and inspiration, that we Ugandans do more than just exist and exit.
