{UAH} MP Oboth-Oboth, In-Laws Clash Over His Wife’s Strange Illness – Red Pepper Uganda
|
4:59 PM |
No comments |
MP Oboth-Oboth, In-Laws Clash Over His Wife's Strange Illness
By John V Sserwaniko
West Budama South MP Jacob Oboth-Oboth's 36 year old wife Constance Naome Awino isn't well. And yet the senior legislator is sharply disagreed with his in-laws on what should be done to get her out of trouble.
Disagreements also abound as to what may have caused her bad health condition. He believes it's something that has historically been running in her family yet in-laws attribute it to mistreatment by the MP. In a phone interview with this newspaper, Oboth-Oboth maintained that the mother of his 5 children suffers occasional "nervous breakdown" but his brother-in-laws, led by Andrew Ongango, vehemently dismissed that claim.
Ongango maintains that his sister is very okay but the MP keeps advancing the narrative of mental illness in order to justify the divorce act he has been plotting on her since 2013.
"The truth is my wife is not okay. She has had episodes of nervous breakdown and sometimes suffers demonic-like attacks. Nervous breakdown history runs through the family but her relatives don't want to accept that. I'm insisting it's clinical and we take her to the hospital but they won't accept that. They want to take her to churches which I have objected to because I don't trust some of those churches. Why are they blackmailing me? I'm a decent man and I have been a good husband and father. Even as we speak now I'm at Budo visiting our first born child. My view remains my wife has a problem that can be clinically handled. I have told them I'm selective. I don't buy every church. I don't' trust their doctrine. I have been misunderstood on that because unlike them, I have strong knowledge of the word. It's okay if they have resorted to blackmail taking me to newspapers. God will punish them. History will judge them harshly," said Oboth who was also surprised to learn his in laws, led by Andrew Ongango, had taken the matter to his boss Speaker Rebecca Kadaga.
Ongango dismissed Oboth's explanations and maintained that the state of near mental breakdown their sister is experiencing has resulted from the psychological torture occasioned by Oboth-Oboth. "He doesn't buy food at home and my sister suffers travelling in taxis everyday from Mukono to ICT Ministry where she works. He is always abusing her saying your parents are poor people. These are the things which have made my sister to become mentally broken," Ongango explained to this writer.
He says in 2013, his sister suffered similar mental breakdown but immediately recovered when their relative Odoi Tanga intervened and prevailed on Oboth-Oboth to stop mistreating her. "Tanga was so furious he even reported the matter to the President as justification for his support for Phoebe Otala who stood against Oboth-Oboth. Now that they reconciled with Tanga to fight Itesos in Tororo County, Oboth feels there is no danger and this is why he has resumed hostilities against my sister which has renewed her mental distress," Ongango explained.
He accused Oboth-Oboth for always being away on foreign trips exposing his sister to loneliness. "And when he isn't away he doesn't buy food regardless of whether the children are there or not. You can imagine by the time an MP's wife begins calling you begging to send her even 5k! It simply shows how he has been mistreating her.
He has cars but can never give her a lift to town. She is always suffering in taxis early morning and late evening yet you have a husband who keeps calling your old man in the village calling him poor and vowing to divorce his daughter," Ongango said of Oboth's wife Constance Naome who works as a personnel officer in the ICT Ministry.
Oboth denied being so mean saying: "At all times when you come to my house in Mukono you will find no less than 100kgs of rice. Just make an impromptu visit and see for yourself. But that's fine if that is what they have decided to allege against me despite all the good things I have done for them."
The in-laws also accused Oboth-Oboth of confining their daughter Constance to stay in bushy neighborhood of Chungu village in Mukono where the nearest neighbor is some kms away. "They reside in boys' quarters and the place doesn't look like an MP's home," said a disgruntled relative adding that before moving in the three roomed boys' quarters, the couple was staying at Ofwono Opondo's home in Mukono.
"They spent the whole of Oboth's first term as an MP staying at Opondo's home until Opondo's brother [John Ofwono of BoU/Shell Uganda] sold his plot to Oboth-Oboth but up to now he has failed to construct a reasonable house there. We wonder where he puts his money," Ongango lamented in an interview with Red Pepper.
In the village, at the time Oboth married Constance in 1985, he was residing in his brother's grass-thatched house in the village. Recently when the family forcefully removed Constance from SAAS Clinic, claiming she was about to be administered with drugs that would induce her into mental illness to justify her admission in Butabika, Oboth furiously rung his father-in-law YY Ongango and told him off for being a very poverty-stricken old man.
The old man gathered his guts and reminded Oboth-Oboth how he was also very poor until he became MP. The old man wondered why he spent many years renting muzigo in Bweyogerere if indeed he wasn't poor. Even when the home is in a remote forested Mukono area, no mosquito nets have been bought exposing the wife and children to rampaging mosquitoes. "He doesn't allow my sister to pray or go to Church. She tried to go to Watoto and he stopped her saying those are cult churches and when he sends us messages I'm going to divorce your sister, we tell him go ahead but he is stuck because he doesn't yet have as good ground," Andrew Ongango said.
He added that a few weeks ago, Oboth-Oboth forced Constance to be admitted at SAAS Clinic where doctors were smuggled in and tried to refer her case to Butabika. "We refused and my brother Zedekiah Jaramogi, who is vying for the Tororo LC5 Seat, went and removed her from SAAS clinic. When that happened, Oboth-Oboth refused to pay the medical bills [Shs500, 000] and switched off his phone. We had to fundraise to get her out and we immediately sent her to the village.
Oboth-Oboth became so furious and called my father threatening to arrest him if he doesn't surrender the girl back," Andrew Ongango said. Deputy IGP Okoth Ochora, who is also related to Constance through marriage, had to intervene asking police men not to dare detain the old man. "It would have been ideal for him [Okoth] to talk to Oboth-Oboth but the man is too arrogant. Whoever calls him risks being dismissed as a pauper. He will say don't bring your poverty to me," Ongango says.
He says they have resorted to petitioning Kadaga because of the immense respect Oboth-Oboth has for her. "We have no problem divorcing our sister if that will bring her peace. We dare Oboth-Oboth to write that divorce letter he has been threatening us with." When we rang him and got the impression the story was breaking anytime, Oboth-Oboth rang the Prime Minister of the Adhola Cultural Institution begging him to prevail on Jaramogi whom he accused of trying to politically destroy him in order to secure the Itesos votes (in Tororo County) in the upcoming LC5 by-elections.
The PM yesterday met Constance's family and begged them to save Oboth-Oboth's political life but rejected pleas to call a news conference to defend Oboth-Oboth the moment the Red Pepper story comes out. Meanwhile, Oboth-Oboth has intensified his revengeful activities by expelling Constance's relatives (aunties) who have been residing at the couple's home in Mukono and in the village in Tororo.
"To us this amounts to constructively divorcing our sister and we dare him to put it in writing and we see what to do next for him," Ongango told us via telephone last night.
0 comments:
Post a Comment