NRM leaders campaign for party flagbearer Faridah Nambi during the recent Kawempe North by-election. PHOTOS/FILE
Members of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Buganda Parliamentary Caucus are today expected to descend on Kakuuto County in force for a function organised by the area Member of Parliament, Mr Christopher Kalemba.
The visit to Kyotera is the third that the caucus is making in as many weeks. The first constituency visit was on March 16 when they converged in Mr Abdu Mutumba’s Kiboga West constituency, before descending on Mr Robert Migadde Ndugwa’s Buvuma County last Sunday.
Ms Hope Grania Nakazibwe, the Mubende District Woman Representative, who is also the vice chairperson of the caucus, says the visits are the first phase of a programme that will see them also visit constituencies in Sembabule, Mubende and Gomba as part of an effort to whip up party members and revive the NRM’s fortunes in the region.
“Our main aim is to bring back Buganda to [President] Museveni. Our aim is to have the constituencies that we have as NRM remain in the hands of the NRM, but also add on those that are now NRM for now,” Ms Nakazibwe told Sunday Monitor.
However, if what Mr Robert Migadde Ndugwa, the chairperson of the caucus, says is anything to go by, the caucus is not in agreement over what to prioritise. Does it focus on strengthening individual NRM MPs or those of the party and its chairperson? “We are not necessarily helping the party. We are helping ourselves first. 20 MPs go to morale boost their colleague who is a member of the party,” Mr Migadde says.
Nevertheless, if Ms Nakazibwe is talking of returning Buganda to Mr Museveni and the NRM, it is on account of the dismal showing that the party and its candidate put up in Buganda during the 2021 elections.
L-R: NRM candidate for Kawempe North by-election, Faridah Nambi, Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja and NRM national vice chairperson, Moses Kigongo during Kawempe North by-election campaigns on March 11, 2025. PHOTO/ COURTESY
2021 defeats
Mr Museveni was, for the first time since 1996 when his government started organising elections, beaten to the central region vote by a difference of 614,677 votes.
Candidate Museveni of the NRM got a total of 838,858 votes against the 1,453,535 votes that were garnered by the presidential candidate of the National Unity Platform (NUP), Mr Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, aka Bobi Wine.
The NRM also lost at least 10 parliamentary seats in the central region to NUP and the Democratic Party (DP) during the election.
Mr Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, Mr Museveni’s vice president of 10 years, who was seeking re-election to represent Bukoto Central for a seventh term in Parliament, was swept aside by DP’s Richard Ssebamala. Mr Ssekandi had also represented the same constituency in the Constituent Assembly (CA).
Other NRM bigwigs whose political scalps were claimed by the Opposition include ministers Judith Nabakooba, Vincent Bamulanzeki Ssempijja, Kezimbira Miyingo, Beti Olive Kamya, Nakiwala Kiyingi and Haruna Kasolo, who were holding the Information Communication Technology (ICT) and National Guidance; Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries; Higher Education; Lands and Urban Development; Youth and; Microfinance dockets respectively.
Minister Kasolo was beaten to the Kyotera County seat by DP’s Lukwago John Paul Mpalanyi. Mr Lukwago garnered 28,230 votes against the minister’s 20,431 votes.
Interrogation of the election
That outcome compelled NRM to commission a post-election assessment exercise to interrogate what had caused the reversals. The exercise was headed by Mr Godfrey Ssubi Kiwanda, NRM’s vice chairman in Buganda region.
“We hired a professional research firm to do the work. It entailed interactions with party members, flag bearers and other stakeholders. The researchers will then compile a report, which we are going to submit to the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the party for debate before we can share it with others,” Mr Kiwanda told Sunday Monitor in a previous interview.
Mr Kiwanda said eight different meetings were held in different parts of the region. Residents of the areas were asked to give their views on what had been the most pressing issues in Buganda in the run-up to the elections.
“We asked people to weigh in on how issues like sectarianism, brutality of police and other forces, standards of living, evictions and others like forcing of the fishing communities out of the waters had impacted the election,” he said.
The findings were presented for discussion by the party’s bigwigs at a week-long retreat that was held at the Nile Resort Hotel in Jinja in November 2022.
NUP leaders campaign for party flagbearer Elias Nalukoola during the recent Kawempe North by-election
Conclusions
Mr Emmanuel Dombo, the NRM’s director for communication, told Sunday Monitor that the week-long retreat narrowed the causes of the severe defeat that the party was subjected to in Buganda to six factors that required urgent attention.
He named the six as deployment of soldiers on the waters of lakes Victoria and Kyoga, which antagonised fishing communities; failure by NRM leaders to articulate the achievements of the party; land grabbing and illegal evictions involving security operatives; brutality of police and security agencies during the elections; poor service delivery, especially in the area of roads infrastructure and; the role of traditional and religious leaders in influencing the elections.
“It was generally agreed that NRM leaders were not telling the population what the government had done, was doing and is planning to do. The population did not seem to have information about government programmes,” Mr Dombo said.
Caucus plan
Ms Nakazibwe does not say whether it was a result of the Jinja discussion that the caucus came up with its own plan, but she says the caucus mooted a plan to embark on a sustained campaign to revive the party’s fortunes in Buganda and sold it to the NRM.
The caucus strategy going into the implementation is a bit fuzzy, but if what the Attorney General, Mr Kiryowa Kiwanuka, posted on X (formerly Twitter) in the immediate aftermath of the Kiboga rally is anything to go by, organising public rallies is going to be an integral part of the strategy.
“NRM Buganda Parliamentary Caucus successfully launched the Buganda for M7 campaign in Kiboga. We shall go around the entire region to monitor government projects, highlight what has been done, the plans for what is to be done and ask the people of Uganda to continue supporting NRM,” he posted.
What he posted seemed to specifically address one of the conclusions arrived at during the Jinja meeting – that NRM leaders had failed to articulate the party’s achievements.
Fixing concerns
It would appear that members of the caucus are taking advantage of the fact that an election is approaching fast in order to demand that the government either fulfils its promises or resolves long-standing grievances. Mr Migadde says the timing has never been more ideal.
“Because this is a political period, we think the government is also ready to listen more this time because they are also looking for something. So a long-standing problem can be solved during this time,” Mr Migadde says.
What transpired in Buvuma on March 23 points to a plan that entails the use of government officials or ministers to address concerns that are peculiar to specific constituencies.
Such an approach, Mr Migadde says, not only gives reassurances to the public that something is being done to solve their problems, but also enables government officials to experience or hear first-hand from the people.
Mr Migadde is one of a section of NRM proponents in Buganda who are of the view that the party’s fortunes in Buganda would not have taken so bad a hit in 2021 if the government had been more proactive in as far as addressing the region’s grievances.
“In Buvuma, there are two main issues why, for example, the support of the NRM went down. That is a failure to compensate people for their land and operations on the lake by UPDF. I won, but I would have won with a bigger margin. If I won with 72 percent, I should have won with 80 percent. How do you expect a person to support you or support the President if they are mistreated and not getting justice?” Mr Migadde wonders.
It emerged that failure by Mr Museveni to fulfil a promise to connect the island to the national power grid, delayed compensation of residents of the island for land taken over by the government for planting of oil palm trees and continued confiscation of properties of members of the fishing communities by the Fisheries Protection Unit (FPU) had been high on the residents agenda.
Ms Ruth Nankabirwa was at hand to address issues related to electricity, just like Mr Kiwanuka was at hand to address matters related to delayed compensation.
“We have so far paid Shs44 billion. There are some people who gave land in the third phase of the project who have never been compensated. There are some who are being paid now. Those who the government owes Shs1.3 billion are going to be paid starting on Monday,” Mr Kiwanuka said.
The Monday that he was alluding to was March 24. It not clear whether the payments were effected, but should it have taken so long for government officials to address those issues?
Lt Col Mercy Tukahirwa, the commander of the FPU, responding to appeals by minister Nankabirwa, announced that all those whose property had been confiscated could have it back.
“Whoever has any property that was confiscated should have it back. If your boat engine was taken, let it be released to you. If you have a car in our custody, let it be handed back to you,” Lt Col Tukahirwa declared, sparking off wild celebrations.
Timing
Now some of the issues and grievances in Buvuma have been long standing. Mr Adrian Wasswa Ddungu, the LC5 chairperson of Buvuma, had before the minister’s address revealed that the promise to connect the island to the power grid had stood for 16 years.
Some of the claims for compensation for land were also discovered to have been dating back to 2014, while the issue of harassment by the FPU had been around for the last five years. Did the solutions not come too late?
“Ideally, this should not be happening during this period; it should have happened long ago, but we are not looking at when a problem was solved. I will tell people that this has been solved, and people will be happy, so there is an improvement in the perception and understanding,” Mr Migadde says.
Will the wild cheers that greeted some of the pronouncements in Buvuma and those that will greet the ones that are to be made in Kyotera today precipitate a change in the NRM’s political fortunes? That is the question.
