The greatest gift of all

The greatest and most precious gift of all is life. That's why we wake up everyday to go work even when we don't feel like it, pursuing further studies, getting married, raising children and pursuing liberty and happiness. The drive behind this is the preservation life to the best of our ability.

Every person is better alive than dead

So precious is life that we want to cling on to it without letting go. It doesn't matter how toothless and wrinkled and helpless age has made us, we want to live on. Even when we know death is the gateway to heaven; the place of everlasting bliss, we hold on to the breath of life hoping it's never stuffed out. That's why individual safety and national security is of such paramount importance that without it no regime survives long. Idi Amin was not despised because he was a dictator. He was abhorred because his hands were dripping with the blood of innocent people. When it became evident no one was safer, everything had to be done to knock him off his high horse. 

Many years later, the devaluation of life is back to haunt us. You have to get worried the rate at which Ugandans are dying in the night club, on the roads, at beaches, in electioneering; mysteriously and openly without anyone providing the answers and the justice. The latest victim, a musician with a colourful stage name Master Blaster, was shot dead at a night club and buried under mysterious night circumstances.

As usual the police sang its old song: "investigations ongoing" but it always ends there. 

As a country we need to get a grip about the value and preciousness of life and not toy with it anyhow. The great thinker Henry David Thoreau said, "Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it."