By Spy Iganda
The family of fallen human rights activist Esther Nakajjigo aka Essie, who died in the United States of America early this week after a storm hit a car she was traveling in with two others, is begging President Yoweri Museveni and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them repatriate her body, such that she can be accorded proper burial.
According to family members, Nakajjigo, who was pursuing a Masters Degree at Colorado University, was returning home from shopping and was driving with two others when they encountered a storm, which whirled their car and forced it into a building. Only one occupant in the vehicle survived, with severe injuries.
However, Nakajjigo’s father John Bosco Mulangira says that they cannot repatriate the body for proper internment in Uganda, because of a Presidential Directive issued by President Yoweri Museveni in April this year, banning the handling and or repatriation of all bodies of people that die outside Uganda, to avoid the spread of COVID-19.
“We are only pleading and begging with the government to help us return her remains home such that she can be buried here, because Esther meant a lot not only to us but to also several other people she had helped,” Mulangira said.
It should be noted that President Museveni suspended all passenger flights at Entebbe International Airport as one of the measures to prevent the importation of COVID-19 into the country by travellers and directed that all people who die abroad should be buried in the countries where they die from.
But a hashtag #EssieBackhome has since been created by the fans and beneficiaries of Nakajjigo’s generosity, such that at least government authorities can bend the law a bit and work out modalities of allowing them to repatriate their heroine and lay her to rest at her ancestral home.
While eulogizing her, People Power movement leader MP Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine tweeted that;
“Esther Nakajjigo, a young Ugandan activist, devoted her life to the rights of women & girls. Very sad we lost her at such a young age; moreover now when girls experience heightened violations. I join her family in the push to have her body brought home from the US.
#EssieBackHome”
At the age of 17, Nakajjigo was named Uganda’s Ambassador for Women and Girls. She led a popular reality television show on teenage pregnancy called Saving Innocence Challenge, a world-renowned and female-led movement financed by local girls for local girls.
She advocated for a decent life for refugee women and girls through her participation in the Global Girls Movement (Lift up her Voice). Nakajjigo won five national awards and a Geneva Women’s World Summit Prize, and was passionate about giving migration a human face. Her dream was to see every girl in every country get educated and she had staged a devout war against child pregnancy.
