Mr Nicholas Sengoba
In a video recording on social media, a place Kawempe North MP Muhammad Ssegirinya found fame and following, the late lawmaker willed in cryptic and prophetic fashion. “When I die don’t say ‘rest in peace,’ yet they have killed me. Instead say, ‘fight hard, Mr Update’.
The by-election to replace Ssegirinya, known by his moniker ‘Mr Update’ ,ended in a fight that began right on the nomination day. Security agencies, including the Uganda Police, the Joint Anti-Terrorism Team (JATT), the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) and armed men in plain clothes visited violence on members of the Opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) and journalists. The scary scenes kept voters away.
Of 199,342 registered voters, only about 28,002 were counted as having voted which is a turnout of about 14 percent. Of the 197 polling stations, results from about 15 were excluded. Armed goons destroyed ballot boxes and scattered the voting materials in the presence of security officials. Yet in the 2021 General Election Ssegirinya won with 41,197 votes. NUP’s diminutive Elias Luyimbazi Nalukoola, who was manhandled right after his nomination, polled 17,764 votes, defeating Ms Faridah Nambi Kigongo of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), who managed 8,593 votes.
The rest of the other candidates’ votes were negligible. Military deployment and brutality with impunity on the scale seen in Kawempe North is the preserve of the state. In most elections, low turn ups help the weaker candidate. The calculation in the extreme is that when the genuine voters stay away, it gives the one with the arsenal of violence leeway to ship in voters from elsewhere to vote or stuff pre-ticked ballots in the boxes. It works well in places where the candidates are neck and neck.
It didn’t work out that way in Kawempe North because of the vigilance of many people through social media. Almost every move was instantly shared on social media. Probably out of frustration, the 15 polling stations were destroyed to discredit the whole process and warrant a re-run.NRM had a mountain to climb. Many in Kawempe North accused the government of being responsible for the death of the popular and charismatic Ssegirinya.
Visibly sick and frail, the lawmaker was jailed for 17 months before he was granted bail and allowed requisite medical treatment. For NRM, this election was like a suitor from a family responsible for the death of a child in a particular home. Then he has the nerve to approach the bereaved family with a marriage proposal.Kawempe North is one of the poorest areas in Kampala with armies of unemployed urban youth residing in slums or ghettos.
This group has an emotional connection with the leadership of NUP who are in the same age range. The party markets itself as the messiah sent to liberate them. NUP lurks on the NRM government record and shreds it. They blame the failure of government to deliver services like roads, education, adequate housing, healthcare and above all steady gainful employment as the cause of the electorate’s predicament.
They get added ammunition from the news about corruption, land grabbing, human right abuses etc. by those in government, to stir up anger of the voters. NRM’s arguments about government programmes like Parish Development Model (PDM) as a sweetener are diluted by the allegations of government officials diverting the money to ‘their people.’
The one about voting for an MP from the ruling party who can ‘go up to the President’s bedroom’ sounds like a myth by the fact that areas like Karamoja, which vote NRM are far, far worse in every parameter than NUP voting Masaka. There was a recent report about Omoro, which for long has been represented by NRM and former Speaker Jacob Oulanyah (RIP). It got its first, first grade in PLE in 39 years! (There version has been contested - Editor).
The increase in school enrolment has made things, especially in urban areas, tough for governments and election rigging. Social media has simply added fuel to the fire. Where in the past, legacy or traditional media houses where tasked with breaking the news hours later and only from places where they had deployed reporters, here a citizen journalist with a phone and data does so instantly even in nooks without reporters.
They also have the liberty to embellish and broadcast extremely inappropriate footage without self-censorship, like injuries and dead bodies.
That is why it is futile to beat and break the cameras of journalists, to black out information. If beating is an option then the entire electorate should be brutalised, which is impossible. Obviously, NRM is yet to recover from the rejection it suffered in the 2021 election in Buganda. It gives an appearance of a government seated in ‘enemy territory.’
Many of its officials see this as an opportunity to raise their profiles in the eyes of the party chairman – President Museveni. They position themselves as the people who will win back Buganda. They have to give an impression that the money and facilitation he is pumping into the area through them plus his policies, are working. So, an NRM win by whatever means is not debatable.There is a clip of Minister for Youth and Children claiming to arrest a person from NUP with ballot papers. If this is not taken up as a serious security matter that leads to identification of the printery on ‘Nasser Road’ and prosecution then it will end up as useless propaganda intended to mislead.
Already Mr Museveni has penned a missive about Opposition rigging and violence plus justification and sanitising the violence of the armed forces. It sounds like living in denial.Secondly it is clear that there is a fight in NRM for financial and personal reasons.The former NRM MP for Kampala Central, Mr Francis Babu, blamed NRM for not presenting good candidates who are suitable. He claimed some ‘with forged papers’ are paternalistically imposed on the people from above.There was disquiet because there was no formal nomination process for Ms Nambi. She is a daughter of the long serving and ever present NRM vice chairman, Mr Moses Kigongo. By coincidence, Mr Kigongo married Mr Babu’s former wife Olive Zaitun Kigongo, whom he later divorced. There is also the force in NRM of young Turks who ally with the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba. Gen Kainerugaba is President Museveni’s son.
They are very abrasive - the likes of Youth minister Balaam Barugahara. In this election they took centre-stage. While the old hands like Dr Tanga Odoi were complaining that the deployment of the UPDF and JATT was working against NRM, the new kids on the block were stalking the fires when the CDF typically spoke favourably of the brutality!Relatedly, many old hands like the NRM Secretary General Richard Todwong and the National Vice Chairman for Kampala Singh Marwaha Katongole were noticeably absent from this campaign.
There are tales of not reading from the same song sheet with the director for mobilisation, Ms Rosemary Nansubuga Seninde. She was in charge of the ‘logistics’ that fuelled the campaign.Ms Seninde made an asinine remark that the Opposition connives with the police to beat them, to procure sympathy and make NRM unpopular.She was silent on the journalists like Miracle Ibrahim who almost lost his eye in the beatings.
Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and
social issues
X: @nsengoba
