The body of the National Unity Platform (NUP) lawyer Anthony Wameli is expected to arrive in the country tomorrow Friday. Wameli succumbed to colon cancer at Boston Medical Centre in Massachusetts in the United States on February 8th, 2023 following his admission in September 2021.
Following Wameli’s death, information started circulating that his family was stuck and needed Shillings 200 million to return the body. Two weeks after his death, it was said the family had only secured 40 million shillings.
Addressing journalists at Ebenezer Faith Ministry in Kanyanya, a Church founded by Wameli on Thursday morning, Deacon Samuel Boloki revealed that preparations for the repatriation of the deceased’s body are complete and the body is expected in the country between 2 pm and 3 pm on Friday 3rd March.
He explained that the church, family, friends, and the NUP worked together to see that Wameli’s body is returned to the country for final rituals. He dismissed rumours that the NUP for which, Wameli worked had abandoned him.
Barely a week ago, the NUP leadership said they were working on returning Wameli’s body although the paperwork needed for the repatriation was delayed. The Party’s Secretary General Lewis Lubongoya made the revelation during a funeral service held at a local Church in Massachusetts.
Deacon Boloki says that when the body arrives on Friday, it shall be taken to the NUP offices in Kamwokya for public viewing and later to Wameli’s home in Kyetume in Mukono district for a night vigil.
The following day, Saturday, the body shall be brought to Ebenezer Faith Church in Kanyanya where a service shall be held and the body viewed again as family and friends celebrate Wameli’s life.
Pastor Moses Omony says that while Wameli was a lawyer, first, he was a pastor who had a calling to serve humanity. He says they shall take forward his vision toward the church and humanity.
Steven Kabalika, another church leader who has known Wameli for over 18 years, says that his legacy shall live on not only as a lawyer but a pastor. He says the church shall celebrate his life and thank God for all he achieved during service.
He says it’s such service that saw Wameli leave his job as a grade one Magistrate in Nakasongola to come and save people. He says perhaps, he couldn’t reconcile his work as a magistrate who issued verdicts to people who he would later find in prisons during his service as a churchman.
Wameli, who represented NUP president, Robert Kyagulanyi during his 2021 presidential election petition before the Supreme Court died at 44 years of age having been born on 29 August 1978. He unsuccessfully attempted to join active politics when he ran for the Bubulo East parliamentary seat in the 2021 general elections.
He was also a human rights lawyer under his company of Wameli & Co, Advocates and rose to fame in 2017 when he defended the suspects in the trial for the murder of the former police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi.
He also represented Jamil Mukulu, the suspected leader of the rebel Allied Democratic Forces-ADF, jailed former accountant in the Office of the Prime Minister, Geoffrey Kazinda, and former presidential candidate Gen. Henry Tumukunde.
On September 10, 2021, the Uganda Law Society (ULS) Annual General Meeting named Wameli as the criminal defence lawyer of the year and voted his Company as the law firm of the year.
