The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
The first was about a young Karimojong girl, Margaret Rose Illukol from northeastern Uganda whose entire face had been mauled by a hyena when she was left sleeping alone in a thatched hut of her nomadic parents.
The Rotary Club of Kampala quickly took up the case, and after wide media publicity, Australian Rotarians came ahead of American Rotarians and picked Margaret from Kampala and took her to Newcastle, Australia, where it took more than 20 complicated surgeries over several years for her to be reconstructed.
Margaret would not only survive but she went on to become a registered nurse at the same hospital she had been treated, Owori said. The second project, which the American Rotarians started after they arrived too late for Margaret, was the successful open-heart surgeries for three children.
Born to Zephania and Mary Ochieng in West Budama District (present day Tororo), Sam was the third born in a big family of 14; seven boys and seven girls.
Reminiscing about his childhood, Owori would years later note that although his father was a man of means, he ensured that his children grew up as part of the community in which they lived.
“Our father was an unrepentant disciplinarian who insisted that we, his children, as everybody else, had to earn everything in life and not expect to gain anything without sweat,” he said, “That helped us to grow not as privileged children but like the other village kids.”
Sam attended Kisoko Primary School in Tororo before joining King’s College Budo for his O’ and A’ level education. Owori would later join Makerere University in Kampala to study Economics from where he was hired by the now defunct Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB) as a graduate officer in 1968. He was at UCB for most of his working career in Uganda.
While at UCB, he rose through the ranks as Chief Manager, General Manager, and ended as the Acting Chairman/ Managing Director in 1990. Owori would later serve as Board Secretary, Bank of Uganda, before joining the African Development Bank at the headquarters in Abidjan, Ivory Coast as Executive Director.
Owori was a scholar and consultant with qualifications in law, employment, corporate resources management, microfinance, and marketing from several institutions in England, Japan, Switzerland, Tanzania, and the US, including Harvard Business School.
He served in numerous organisations; including the Uganda Heart Institute, the Centre for African Family Studies, Mulago Hospital, Mukono Theological College, and Kampala City Council (now KCCA) to mention a few.
At the time of death, Owori was the chief executive officer of the Institute of Corporate Governance of Uganda, whose mission is to promote excellence in corporate governance principles and practice.
Owori is survived by a widow, Norah Owori; three sons, Adrian, Bony and Dan, and several grand children. He will be laid to rest in Kidera in Tororo District on July 29.
