By Mulengera Editors
To his credit, Presidential Candidate Robert Kyagulanyi has (in a major way) reached out to some of the key king makers for Lango sub region, which is home to not less than 2m eligible voters in the upcoming general elections slated for next January.
He has been at Obote’s burial place of Akokoro and also had engagements with former First Son Jimmy Akena, who also continues to be UPC President. This well-calculated building of bridges is important and strengthens, as opposed to weakening, Kyagulanyi’s bid for Presidency.
Kyagulanyi over the weekend also conspicuously participated in activities of the Lango Catholic Church at the Cathedral in Lira City (including taking the first reading & participating in the choir/that mass was done by a Luganda choir) where he was enthusiastically received by the area Bishop, Church leaders and the laity.
Momentum in his favour is visible in most of the major trading centres and townships in Lango sub region, which Dr. Kizza Besigye, his predecessor in overall opposition leadership, easily won in 2001, 2006 and to an extent 2011. As of 2016, Museveni had leveraged a network of cadres and new converts, led by Rebecca Otengo, to make inroads in the sub region.
Like elsewhere in Uganda, the Lango EC register is dominated by young people of 25 years and below. These are pro-change and their hopes are currently in Kyagulanyi and no one else. They are for him because they see him as having the highest chance to help them overcome Gen Museveni both through the ballot paper or even street protests.
But for that support to be translated into actual victory, as opposed to ending in frustration and lamentations (of we were rigged/our votes were stolen), Kyagulanyi needs to build bridges and ally himself with Lango sub region leaders with significant name recognition.
In 2021, he equally had support among such young people there but they didn’t have leadership of the big-name political actors around whom they could be coalesced to stand up and defend that victory or even coordinate things to ensure that the same wasn’t hijacked during vote tallying processes by the EC at district headquarters.
The security of the all-important DR forms is also equally important and you need the active involvement of big names (like Jimmy Akena etc) to cow state operatives (like RDCs and DISOs) who are always out to snatch and destroy such DR forms, which is the only way one’s election victory can be evidenced.
Kyagulanyi, who ought to have started earlier and reached out to even more Lango political players who for decades have been anti-Museveni, seems to have learnt his lesson, which is why he is currently more deliberate in reaching out and wooing such pillars of political significancy in Lango (and ought to do the same with other regions & sub regions).
The illustration of all this vital realization by Bobi is that, besides publicly being hosted by Akena, who many consider to have signalled that the NUP leader is the man with the cards for 2026, Kyagulanyi has also managed to woo and bring on board key actors like Erute South’s Jonathan Odur and Oyam South’s Isha Otto, who is respected by many ordinary Langis for the consistency with which he has opposed and rejected Gen Museveni’s offers to be compromised for more than 15 years since he first became MP.
Disclaimer: the only minus is that Isha Otto actively resents Akena and his wife Betty Among (having opposed their deals with Museveni)-and to that extent, his involvement and being NUP flag bearer for Oyam South naturally discomforts Akena, the outgoing Lira City East MP.
Otherwise, Presidential Candidate Robert Kyagulanyi needs bridges like these (Akena etc) and doing exactly that increases chances to enlarge his vote from the Lango sub region, which he actually could even win and ultimately overwhelm Gen Museveni there, like he did in Buganda and Busoga in 2021.
Gen Museveni, renowned for his patronage interventions and networks, will predictably attempt countering the Kyagulanyi penetration by investing billions to bolster NRM political mobilization but the bitter truth is that there is nothing great he is going to ever do to cause those politically fatigued young people to genuinely ever like him, the way they spontaneously love their contemporary Robert Kyagulanyi.
In any case, such money can only enrich a few individual Musevenists, without ever being of any significant impact in the lives of the jobless and disgruntled under 25s who actually have nothing to lose if he ceased being Uganda’s President.
It has become norm, and it won’t be changing soon, that off every Shs10bn Gen Museveni deploys to bolster mobilization in Lango or any other part of Uganda, only a quarter of that, if at all, will be deployed to doing the intended mobilisation.
The rest (3 quarters) of the money will predictably be eaten by thieves in his government and party. They are ideologically as exhausted as their master, and they see Gen Museveni’s Kyagulanyi-related paranoia as an opportunity to eat and self-aggrandize.
So, Kyagulanyi has always had the organic support among the young people including in Lango, who see him as an opportunity or avenue to protest and demonstrate their resentment towards Gen Museveni’s Presidency-in-perpetuity. What was lacking in the case of regions like Lango was for the NUP President to become deliberate and reach out to actors like Akena, ex-MP Isha Otto and others to build the game-changing bridges.
Already, hundreds of thousands of people in Lango, where Obote-ism is like a cult, are angry that their Akena was unfairly blocked from featuring on the 2026 ballot paper as a Presidential Candidate.
Upon being signalled by their master Akena, many of those will be more than prepared to demonstrate their resentment towards Museveni by embracing Kyagulanyi’s Protest Vote, come voting day. This is most likely going to happen and being allied with big-name actors like Akena diminishes chances of Kyagulanyi’s actual vote in Lango being altered to advantage the incumbent YK Museveni.
And, regardless of whether Museveni uses the military to cling on even after being demonstrably defeated in the ballot or not, being able to galvanize a win from Lango sub region does place Kyagulanyi closer to political victory, as opposed to diminishing him.
There are indicators that the political colossus from Magere will be home and dry once he surprises the doubting Thomases by winning Lango sub region and growing his 2021 electoral scores in every other region of Uganda, besides retaining Buganda and Busoga, which he won already. Kyagulanyi could cause unprecedented headache to the NRM cronies and Gen YK Museveni, who could end up failing to garner 51% of the vote.
This could culminate into a re-run, if not something worse, which will be total humiliation and very bad news to Gen YK Museveni, who is increasingly becoming an exhausted old man, having been President doing the same job for 40 years, without break.
There have been efforts by bloggers linked to Mathias Mpuuga’s DF to leverage the videos and photos of Kyagulanyi prostrating at Milton Obote’s grave to re-ignite historical grievances, in order to portray the NUP Presidential Candidate as anti-Buganda and therefore unworthy to get Bagandas votes.
But that evidently won’t significantly dent Kyagulanyi because majority of his supporters/voters (the under 25s) have their immediate bread and butter issues and are seemingly not that much interested in the UPC-KY history, which culminated into Obote attacking the Lubiri and the forcing into London exile Kabaka Mutesa who in the end died from there, a very miserable man, under mysterious circumstances.
Young Bagandas under 25 believe it was their parents’ business (and not theirs) to occasion revenge onto the Langis or UPC over the 1960s injustices Milton Obote perpetrated against Sir Edward Mutesa. They are broke, jobless and hopeless. Hence, they have their own immediate priorities, which are bread and butter-related. And yet they are rightly convinced that Gen Museveni is not going to ever address those concerns in any significant and sustainable manner.
Many Baganda (of especially the older generation who don’t constitute even 10% anymore) claimed that Milton Obote not only turned against Mutesa and humiliated him into exile but also followed him there and had a hand in his alleged poisoning.
The pro-DF bloggers have been trying to leverage his last week visit to the Obote grave to portray Kyagulanyi as acquiescing to the violence and injustices the deceased former President unleashed on the Sir Edward Mutesa, father to current Kabaka Mutebi.
Their calculation is that such claims can demonize Kyagulanyi and diminish his support among voters in Buganda. But it doesn’t seem to be working, as majority of the young people seem to be determined in only celebrating the wisdom manifested in their leader Kyagulanyi’s decision to reach out and build bridges with players like Akena.
They are rightly celebrating that move as political shrewdness and as an opportunity to grow Kyagulanyi’s overall vote, having rightly realized that in order for him to win and get to effectively govern Uganda as President, Buganda’s votes alone can’t be sufficient.
Even Dr. Sam Kazibwe, a leading analyst on Kabaka’s CBS radio and BBS TV, a few days ago commended Kyagulanyi for acting very prudently by reaching out to Akena in order to increase/deepen NUP’s acceptability among his Langi co-ethnics.
This simply means that the sad ending of UPC-KY alliance and the regrettable events of 1966 notwithstanding, Kyagulanyi’s decision to build bridges with key opposition figures in Lango was a prudent one, regardless of how much his adversaries will try to contradict the same.
And in any case, as many nostalgia-driven young voters (who directly were never impacted by Obote’s alleged transgressions) have asserted on social media, there is nothing wrong with reconciliation between Baganda and Langis over the betrayals over the events of the 1960s. If it indeed has to take a Kyagulanyi allying with Akena & co, for the same to be kickstarted, so be it. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
