2026: Inside NRM’s Shs15b voter registration budget

The ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party is to spend nearly Shs15b to conduct its five-day register update across the country. 
The exercise that kicked off yesterday runs until Sunday and will include the training of NRM party district party chairpersons, administrative secretaries, registrars and regional coordinators from the Office of the National Chairman. 

New members who have attained the age of 16 and 17 will also be registered. 
A circular dated March 10 from the party secretariat to all NRM district chairpersons, party administrative secretaries, registrars and all zonal coordinators of the Office of the National Chairperson (ONC) said facilitation for the field tasks will be deposited into the district bank accounts. 
Ms Rose Namayanja, the party deputy secretary general, said the exercise is big and would be done across the country. 
“Allowances alone, which will be in the form of food for each of the registrars at the villages, would be a token of Shs50,000.” 

“So if you multiply by more than 72,000 villages; that gives you an estimate of the magnitude of the exercise. We have committed part of the resources we got from the government under the Political Parties and Organisations Act to undertake this exercise,” she said. 
The NRM party says its register, as of 2020 when the last update was done, had 11.4 million members. 
Ms Namayanja said the party is undertaking the update to crosscheck the party numbers again. 

“Until we conclude the exercise, we cannot tell you our numbers but where we are starting from, it is 11.4 million members,” she said. 
The latest statistics from the Electoral Commission show that Uganda has 146 districts, 2,184 sub-counties, towns, municipal divisions; 10,595 parishes and 70,626 villages where the register update exercise will take place. 
The actual update shall take five days culminating in a Village Baraza for the final scrutiny of the register on Sunday. 
The last party register update was done in 2020 under the restricted Covid-19 pandemic. 

Mr Godfrey Kiwanda, the NRM vice chairperson for Buganda region, said the party is given Shs35b a year and part of the money is what they have used for the ongoing register update. 
“This is something that we budgeted for and have been saving the money to ensure we actualise and we get this. So, it’s just a matter of budgeting and priority,” he said. 

Mr Emmanuel Dombo, the party director of communications, yesterday said more than Shs200m would be spent on the publicity exercise. 
In 2020, the party primaries faced a great challenge owing to the absence of the voter register and this prompted party national chairman, President Museveni to direct all members with cards and not in the register to be allowed to vote. 

On February 28, Mr Museveni launched the update of the register exercise, warning to the Opposition against interfering with the exercise with the intention of disorganising the pending party primaries.