The Heartwarming Story Of A Boda Boda Rider’s Son Who Reclaimed His Father’s ID Card Divides The Internet
It was supposed to be a straightforward feel-good story. A Makerere University medical graduate, son of a boda boda rider, shares how he finally reclaimed his father’s national identity card — held by money lenders since 2013 — after years of saving. The internet was meant to applaud. And it did, briefly.
Then Bernard Sabiti arrived in the comments.
On March 24, fresh Makerere MBChB graduate Kasekende Fulugensio — known on X as @ThePremiumDoc — shared a post that stopped timelines across Uganda.
“After years of saving, I’ve finally reclaimed Mzee’s ID, held by money lenders since 2013,” he wrote. “He first surrendered it just so I could get my P.7 results, then kept borrowing to keep my siblings and I in school — until the loan got too huge and he gave up on ever getting it back.”
The story behind the post is one of extraordinary sacrifice. Kasekende’s father, a boda boda rider, had pledged his national identity document as collateral to a money lender so his son could collect his Primary Seven results — and then kept borrowing, year after year, to keep his children in school. The debt eventually grew beyond what he believed he could ever repay. His son, now a qualified medical doctor, repaid it for him.
Photographs accompanying earlier coverage of the story showed the newly minted doctor in his graduation gown, standing proudly beside his father and the motorcycle that carried the family through years of financial hardship. The images were emotional. The story was compelling. The reactions were immediate.
Not everyone was moved in the way Kasekende may have anticipated.
Bernard Sabiti, writing under the handle @BernardSabiti, quote-posted the graduate’s message with a response that was direct, pointed, and — depending on where you stood — either refreshingly honest or unnecessarily harsh.
“Ok. Enough with this poverty porn and the martyr complex. You beat the odds to succeed, congrats and blessing to the old man. To him, he did his duty — you are his kid. Not sure he approves of putting all this personal info of his online. You are now empowered, go conquer the world!”
The phrase that landed hardest was the first one: poverty porn.
It is a term used to describe the practice of sharing stories of hardship — often involving vulnerable or struggling individuals — primarily for the emotional reaction they generate in an audience, rather than to meaningfully address the underlying circumstances. Sabiti was essentially accusing Kasekende of using his father’s financial struggles as social media content.
Sabiti’s response cracked open a conversation that Uganda’s social media had been circling around for some time without quite having it directly.
On one side: those who argued that stories like Kasekende’s are important and necessary. That they inspire young people from similar backgrounds. That visibility matters. That a boda boda rider’s son becoming a medical doctor is exactly the kind of narrative that a society built on inequality needs to see and celebrate loudly.
On the other side: those who agreed with Sabiti’s discomfort. That the father in the story — a man who surrendered his ID card out of necessity, not by choice — did not consent to having that detail broadcast to thousands of strangers online. That framing a parent’s poverty as the backdrop to a child’s success, however well-intentioned, reduces that parent to a supporting character in their own life story. That there is a version of inspiration-sharing that quietly exploits the very people it claims to honour.
Sabiti’s parting line — “You are now empowered, go conquer the world” — read less as encouragement and more as a pointed instruction: the chapter of performing your struggle for public validation is over. Now go and actually live.
Lost somewhat in the debate is the achievement itself, which by any measure is extraordinary.
The MBChB degree at Makerere University is one of the most demanding academic programmes in the country — years of intensive study, clinical rotations, and professional examinations that require sustained discipline and intellectual rigour. Completing it under financial pressure, with the knowledge of a family debt hanging over the household, is not a small thing.
Kasekende Fulugensio is a medical doctor. His father’s ID card is back in his father’s hands. Whatever one thinks about how the story was shared, neither of those facts is diminished by the conversation that followed.
Perhaps the most honest takeaway from the entire episode is not about one graduate’s social media post. It is about how Uganda tells stories of success and struggle — and who those stories are really for.
When a child succeeds against difficult odds, the instinct to share that story publicly is understandable and often genuinely motivated. But Sabiti’s challenge asks a harder question: in the act of sharing, whose dignity are we protecting, and whose are we trading for engagement?
It is a question worth sitting with — especially in a country where stories of sacrifice and resilience are abundant, and the line between inspiration and exploitation can be thinner than a social media caption.
