By KT Reporter
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.
“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.
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”
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.
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”
“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?”
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”
