Former Miss Uganda and Dokolo District Woman Member of Parliament Cecilia Atim Ogwal has died at the age of 77.

Ogwal, according to sources close to her family died of cancer which she has been battling at a hospital in India.

Ogwal has been serving as a member of the parliamentary Committee of Physical Infrastructure in charge of overseeing and covering policy matters related to Lands, Housing, Urban development, Works and Transport, and Physical Planning. 

She is survived by seven natural children and a number of adopted ones.

At the age of 23, in 1969, Ogwal won Uganda’s beauty contest becoming miss Uganda, a win that went on to make her a householdname in the country’s fashion industry.

She joined active politics in 1985 serving as the Acting Secretary General of Uganda People’s Congress (UPC).

In 1994, she was part of the Constituent Assembly which drafted and promulgated the 1995 Ugandan Constitution. She remained a high-ranking official in the UPC political party until 2004.

During the 2006 parliamentary elections, she lost her Lira Municipality seat to Jimmy Akena, the son of UPC founder Milton Obote. In 2011, Ogwal contested and won the Women’s Representative seat for the newly created Dokolo District.

This time she switched political parties and ran as a member of the Forum for Democratic Change party.