By Mulengera Reporters
For months, President Museveni and his brother Gen Salim Saleh have been engaging with veteran NRM cadre Siraje Kizito Nkugwa who for decades has been a leading politcal and opinion leader in Kiboga.
Nkugwa is a veteran cadre of the NRM who in 2021 got annoyed after feuding a lot with Minister Ruth Nankabirwa, and revenged by defecting to Bobi Wine’s NUP party which defeated the then Woman MP Ruth Nankabirwa. The NUPs went ahead to win many other electoral positions in Kiboga district which had always been an NRM stronghold at all past elections (1996-2021).
So, Nkugwa’s departure, which greatly contributed to the NUP win in Kiboga, greatly hurt Museveni and Saleh, who spent 5 years fighting Obote’s government under Luwero Triangle, leaving them fatally wounded. Kiboga is critical to the NRM because a rural district lying in the heart of Luwero Triangle.
Therefore the two politically very powerful brothers have a lot of emotional attachment to Kiboga whose each and every village and village path they know the way they know the back of their palm.
With Nankabirwa quiting politics and relocating to Luwero district’s Ndejje near Kampala, Gen Museveni saw an opportunity to reach out and reconcile Siraje Nkugwa back to the NRM fold as part of the broader efforts to rebuild the Movement in Kiboga. Desire Muhooza, a daughter to Gen Salim Saleh, came in handy. Her maternal ancestry is in Kiboga where her aunties and uncles are born and buried. She even lives there with a home and has lately been camped in Kiboga where she is seeking to become the Woman MP on the NRM ticket come 2026.
On beginning to camp in Kiboga months ago, Desire Muhooza (who is also a director in OWC which her father leads) started on an exercise to reach out and reconcile disgruntled NRM cadres back to the fold. Protesting the leadership style of Dr. Ruth Nankabirwa, who had been area Woman MP since 1994, many such cadres had defected to NUP not because they hated Museveni as such but because they felt alienated by endless domination by the indifferent Ruth Nankabirwa who had been Minister and the biggest NRM official in Kiboga for decades.
Desire Muhooza has taken it upon herself to lead the grand effort to reclaim Kiboga back to the mighty National Resistance Movement (NRM). She realizes that she needs to build a grand coalition of well-intentioned residents to be able to effectively reorganise Kiboga while amplifying and actualizing her political dream of becoming the area Woman MP. Gratefully, she consulted and got the backing of both Gen Museveni and Salim Saleh, her father.
With the duo’s backing, she sought out Nkugwa who explained to her why many NRM cadres had become lukewarm and disinterested. Nkugwa admitted being responsible for the 2021 misery and rejection the ruling NRM party suffered in Kiboga where for the first time Gen Museveni personally lost the vote to the opposition.
It was through Desire Muhooza that direct channels of communication (which had been blocking during Nankabirwa’s reign) got opened once again. Generals Museveni and Saleh were able to directly engage with Nkugwa who went as far as explaining the whole thing besides offering his unequivocal apology for the political damage his pro-Kyagulanyi activism caused to the ruling NRM party in Kiboga.
During the same Thursday event, Desire Muhooza let the cat out of the bag during a Gen Salim Saleh-enabled public function at Kiboga Saaza Grounds where hundreds of Kiboga residents converged to listen to UCC Executive Director Nyombi Thembo who had come to explain why Community Radios or Bizindalos in the whole of Kiboga had been banned, confiscated and shut down after some operators used them to abuse and insult the person of the President while glorifying Bobi Wine.
Muhooza explained that NRM’s political problems in Kiboga began when Nkuga failed to control his anger and protested by jumping in bed with Kyagulanyi’s NUP party while demonising NRM. Muhooza revealed how Nkugwa had personally apologized to both Museveni and Saleh besides rejoining NRM which he has since offered to work very hard to rebuild in Kiboga back to its original glory while obliterating NUP.
Nkugwa was present as Desire Muhooza spoke and registered his readiness to help overcome the NUP problem which he admitted importing into Kiboga district.
Nkugwa indicated that he regrets his mistake and failure to manage his Nankabirwa-related anger more responsibly and made it clear that he won’t rest until the NUP political curse he personally brought to Kiboga is annihilated once and for all.
The same event was attended by Kiboga Town Council Mayor Henry Kagali who said that, much as he remains NUP, he doesn’t support anyone using media platforms, including the banned Bizindaalos, to abuse the President and his family.
Kagali made it clear that he is objective and isn’t prepared to tolerate fellow opposition leaders who fight government programs like Emyoga, the Grow Project, PDM and others even when they are fellow NUP or opposition supporters. He enumerated the road projects and other social service interventions he has been able to accomplish as Kiboga Mayor, as a result of closely working with people in government.
As the crowd demanded that he declares defection and becomes NRM, Kagali thanked the government of President Museveni for the Shs2bn investment with which Kiboga Town Council roads have been tarmaced. He also enumerated several other infrastructure interventions by the central government for the benefit of the people of greater Kiboga. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
