2021 election: How NRM party, Opposition took the battle online

A source within the NRM told this publication that they needed a team to rebut campaigns that the National Unity Platform (NUP) and Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) had staged on social media, with live feeds that they claimed were showing “horrors of the government”.

Following the arrest of NUP presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, on his campaign trail in Luuka District in November 2020, sporadic protests ensued across the country. The protests that left more than 50 people dead were relayed live on social media.

Sources say two strategic teams were then instituted, one stationed at the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance building, while another was stationed at the Government Citizen Interaction Centre (GCIC) at State House to counter what they said was a campaign that painted the country in a bad light.

“We caused some fights among the Opposition even when we knew that we were the ones behind the fights. We weren’t many, but all we did was to just make sure that there are so many posts going out all the time,” the source, who asked not to be named but claims was part of the team, says.

Mr Duncun Abigaba was one of the GCIC directors who played a supervisory role in the team that sat at the Ministry of ICT. For more than four months, the teams disseminated messages under the hashtag #PeaceFirstUG.

“To be honest, both sides deployed these people who had multiple accounts. But as a person, I didn’t engage in any of those, and my only crime was being associated with the #SecuringYourFuture campaign,” Mr Abigaba says. The main role, the source says, was to make sure that there was a diversion from issues that headlined most of the mainstream media, with the hope of making the public focus on other things.

State Minister for ICT, Godfrey Kabyanga, says NRM needed to convey their messages as much as other political parties.

“We have always had teams that do our work. Since this was a virtual campaign for the election, we needed the teams. Did you want us to sit and fold our hands as NUP attacked and abused everyone?” Kabyanga, who is also the deputy government spokesperson, says.

“NRM is a party that has rights too, even when we are the ones in power. And we are not going to relent in the coming election.”

Frustration mounts in NRM Frustration kicked in when social media giant Facebook, in a surprise move, shut down several accounts linked to government officials and ruling party members, citing duplication of accounts to manipulate public debate ahead of the January 14, 2021, elections.

“Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network. They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, and re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were,” Facebook said in a statement in 2020.

The source says this threw the camp into panic since other parties kept broadcasting live events of their candidates on the campaign trails. NUP-associated platforms such as Ghetto TV always relayed live events around their candidate, Bobi Wine. Government officials reacted by castigating Facebook, saying they had been targeted and that the decision was unwarranted.

While delivering his address to the nation ahead of the 2021 polls, President Museveni said Facebook refused to heed the appeals by the government to unblock his supporters’ social media pages. Following Facebook's refusal, the government then shut down the social media giant, he said.

“Why would anybody do that? When I heard about that, I told our people to warn them… That social channel you are talking about, if it’s operating in Uganda, it should be used equitably by everybody who wants to use it. If you want to take sides against the NRM, then that group will not operate in Uganda. Uganda is ours, it’s not anybody’s… And I am sure government has closed the social media.”

“There is no way anybody can come [here] and play around with our country and decide who is good [and] who is bad. I’m, therefore, very sorry about the inconvenience to those who have been using this channel. We cannot tolerate the arrogance of anybody coming [here] to decide for us who is good and who is bad,” the President added.

Sharing the good side

Minister Kabyanga insists they had the right to defend themselves, and most importantly, present the right image of the country.

“You see, when these unpatriotic people share the images of our country in war, we don’t look good. We should also share the good side of it and make sure that these NUP people sharing other things are stopped,” he said.

“Facebook was unfair, and they did not provide a level ground because they targeted only NRM, which is not right. They should provide a level ground for all players. Good enough, there are new social media channels and some are indigenous, so we won’t be attacked and keep quiet. We have already started parading social media experts and gurus for the work in the next election. This country belongs to all of us, and we should not expect the government to fold their hands when we are under attack.”

Facebook still closed

For four years, Facebook has remained closed in Uganda. However, many government officials and entities still use the social media platform to communicate to the public, including those that are supposed to implement the ban.

A quick online search showed that President Museveni, who had more than a million followers on the platform, last posted in January 2021, which is also around the same time as the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance. However, by press time, the Uganda Police Force had posted about 15 hours earlier, while Uganda Prisons had posted about six days ago.

“Today, April 15, 2025, the Director of Human Resource Administration delivered a lecture on Human Resource Management at PTS Kabalye for UPF trainees. He appreciated their morale,” a police Facebook post indicated.

“Prison officers visited Nyanza Textile Industries Limited (NYTIL) in Jinja City as part of the intermediate command and staff course study tour programme. They witnessed first-hand the successful partnership between the Uganda Prisons Service and NYTIL. This collaboration is a prime example of local synergy driving economic growth,” the Prisons Service post indicated.

Ugandans have mastered the art of bypassing the blockage on Facebook by using Virtual Private Networks (VPN).

Social media numbers, elections

DataReportal findings indicate that there were about 17 million internet subscribers across the country by December 2024, and an estimated 4.4 million Ugandans aged 18 and above were active social media users. A report by Emerging Markets earlier showed that by January 2021, there were approximately 3.2 million Facebook users in Uganda.

But because of the clampdown on social media, by December 2022, this number had decreased to about 2.2 million users, representing 4.1 percent of the population. Mr Timothy Kalyegira, a journalist and social media enthusiast, says the emergence of social media has caused an era where elections can be determined by social media influence that no party worth their name should take for granted.

He, for instance, says in the 1996 election, there was nothing to talk about the internet, and therefore, social media was not a player. In 2001, internet penetration started its journey with mainly media houses and other top tech companies.

“The 2006 elections showed an increase in the number of internet cafés as Facebook had been introduced two years before, and X (Twitter) opened the same year.

But those remained elite pages and had not penetrated to the local people,” Kalyegira says, adding, the intrusion of smartphones in the country around the 2011 election brought a disruption in how people reached out to the voters. But tides changed in 2016 as social media was switched off between polling day and announcement of the winners, which escalated in 2021, when the entire internet was switched off.

“I am sure that the same or even more is going to happen in the 2026 elections because the numbers on the internet have swelled even bigger. This is what has been happening in other countries. By the way, don’t just look at the numbers and assume that if there is, there is the card of influence in those numbers,” Mr Kalyegira says.

This means that, for instance, if there are 3.2 million Ugandans on Facebook, which is about the number of votes the runner-up of the presidential elections normally gets, each of those people could influence about four people within their family and friends. That means the secondary effect of social media goes about fourfold.

Other NRM online avenues

Mr Noah Omuya, a youthful NRM caddre, has over the years developed different strategies for the youth in his locality, advising for an age-oriented approach to the way they have to win the changing demographics of voters.

“The young people are on social media, and we need to find them there. So we need to take this information to them. The closure of Facebook in 2021 somehow affected us in this regard because we were eying the young people to give them important information about civic awareness,” he says.

Mr Abigaba says the ball is in the hands of tech giants to provide a level ground for all political players.

“Elections come with emotions and panic to win. This means that everyone has to use the available tools to make sure that they are ahead of everyone without being gagged. In the last election, the ground was not levelled, and that should be worked upon, otherwise, it is disastrous for now,” he says.

[email protected]

Stay updated by following our WhatsApp and Telegram channels;

Daily Monitor Telegram channel

 Daily Monitor WhatsApp Channel