Mbale City (UG) – In a cabinet meeting that sat today, Monday 15/4/2024, in Entebbe, His Excellency the President of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, directed that Umukuka Emeritus Wilson Weasa Wimimbi be accorded an official funeral and directed the Secretary Office of the President to manage the process. The spokesperson for Inzu ya Masaaba, Steven Masiga, speaking to the Ankole Times, confirmed the government’s directive to accord the deceased former cultural leader an official burial.
Mr. Masiga stressed that during an official burial, the government, by policy, meets all the costs related to burial, which may stretch up to 500 million shillings or even beyond. He also noted the need for a broader National Organizing Committee, much broader than what we had hitherto constituted.
Umukuka Emeritus Wilson Weasa Wimimbi was born in July 1938 in Busano, Mbale District, and was the first LCV chairman for Mbale from 1987 to 1996. He also served as RDC and later as Uganda’s ambassador to Canada. Culturally, he was circumcised in 1962 and taught and worked in various places.
Among the Bamasaaba, he was held in very high esteem and was a last counsel on anything that could not be managed. When the Bamasaaba were entangled in their leadership wrangles recently, the Gender Minister, Hon. Betty Amongi, appealed to him to intervene, and he successfully extinguished that conflict, leading to the gazetting of the current Umukuka, Jude Mike Mudoma, Mr. Steven Masiga reminisced.
Wilson Weasa Wimimbi has a number of children who stay in Uganda and outside the country; he recently lost his first wife and is survived by the last wife. He will be laid to rest at his ancestral home in Busano, about a one-hour drive from Mbale City.
