By Mulengera Reporters
In 2021, even when the Kyagulanyi wave was visibly eminent in many trading canters there, NUP was unable to field many candidates in Rakai district, which is one of the most rural and neglected ones in Museveni’s Uganda.
The party struggled to even get candidates to field leave alone being able to avail them with basic logistical facilitation. In the end, in a district which has 17 Sub Counties and Town Councils, NUP only managed to get three district Councillors to Rakai district council.
These came from the Sub Counties of Ddwaniro, Kifamba and Lwanda. The party also got 9 councillors representing parishes to Sub County-based LC3 councils.
But today, the opposition presence in Rakai has grown to the extent that for some MP positions, you have more than three leaders vying to carry the NUP flag. In Kooki County, which is Banyankole-dominated and has the larger number of Sub Counties, NUP has three MP aspirants besides Osborn Desire Kayima who is taking on Gyavira Ssemwanga in Buyamba, which he won unopposed in 2021 because of the opposition’s inability to get someone to run against him. NUP even has a candidate for LC5 to run against incumbent district chairman Mzee Samuel Ssekamwa.
NUP foot soldiers and coordinators, led by Grace Nalubega who in 2021 won the ballot but failed to overcome wealthy and vastly connected Juliet Kinyamatama, has managed to induce defections from NRM. Several Rakai journalists and long serving Movement cadres have defected from NRM to NUP, having realized its what majority voters want. Many of these have now become NUP candidates for LC3 chairpersons and councillorships. Clearly, the momentum remains in favour of the opposition NUP as NRM leaders get split into camps.
Gen Elly Kayanja comes from Rakai’s Kifamba Sub County and he is elderly, frail, sickly and too disgruntled with the system to bother countering the NUP momentum of young people. Instead of clashing with the young people, the once very vibrant Kayanja these days spends much of his time doing voluntary work for his Buganda Kingdom under his Ngeye clan.
The legendary bush war General is disgruntled to see how Buganda region, to which Museveni recently apologized, has gotten a raw deal from the 40 years of NRM. He is also unhappy to see the political marginalization that has been visited upon his sister Asha Kayanja Lubyayi (whose husband Idi Lubyayi Kisiki of Bukomansimbi recently defected to NUP and has been spiting fire against the NRM which he once loved very much).
Asha Kayanja in 2021 won the NRM flag against Kinyamatama Juliet who came as an independent and won the general elections under very disputed circumstances. As of now, Asha leads a camp of disgruntled NRMs who are up against the perceived dictatorship and autocracy of Semwanga Gyavira, Juliet Kinyamatama and others.
In the recent NRM elections, Gyavira of Buyamba led a camp that sunk money and fielded candidates against those from the Asha Kayanja camp. Some people were offered as much as Shs30m per person to denounce the Asha Kayanja camp.
The Asha Kayanja camp had fielded Dyanga Town Council LC3 chairman Semanda to become NRM Rakai district chairman and was originally facing Gyavira-backed Benon Mugabi who was forced out at the last minute and money man Semwanga Gyavira came by himself.
He campaigned in the last two days and a combination of power and money enabled him to win as pro-Asha Kayanja delegates from Kooki county were bought off and compromised at the last minute. The Kayanjas had their original line-up which Gyavira Ssemwanga later on disregarded as a conspiracy against the people of Buyamba.
The Kayanjas, who have been working with ex-Buyamba MP Amos Mandela while inciting him to reclaim his seat in 2026, hate Gyavira Ssemwanga because they believe it was him who aided Juliet Kinyamatama, an independent, to defeat Asha who had the NRM flag in 2021.
That intrigue has never gone away and there are fears that if State House doesn’t intervene on good time, some of the prominent Kayanja family members might embrace NUP and use the 2026 electioneering season to bury NRM in Kooki, Rakai once and for all.
This has been Museveni’s unassailable stronghold since the days of Joy Mukisa as district speaker, the late Maria Mutagamba as woman MP and the late Vincent Ssemakula Setuba as the LC5 chairman.
The NUP foot soldiers’ squad, led by Grace Nalubega and Osborn Desire Kayima, has created so much pressure through political mobilization to the extent that people in security and intelligence circles fear that outright rigging of the 2026 poll in Rakai could spark off violent riots which the district has never seen. Consensus is that rigging out NUP in Kooki/Rakai is going to be extremely hard and costly to the image of NRM and Mzee Museveni.
This why some intelligence briefs have recommended to the President that the ruling NRM tolerates opposition victory on some elective slots in order to manage and contain the impending political explosion that overt rigging will certainly touch off in Rakai, Kooki. Some are proposing that the regime accommodates some popular winners and moderate politicians from the opposition who are capable of winning their races to avoid extreme radicalization of the young people who are increasingly becoming the majority in the area.
These young people are so much in love with the Grace Nalubega-led opposition in Rakai these days that they recently raised money and bought Premio vehicles and donated the same to the NUP MP candidates to enable them move around the district as they market the NUP message of change amidst protest vote.
To do any political work for a Museveni supporter, these same young people demand for a lot of money yet they are prepared to do probono for the NUP aspirants. This has made the NRM camp very much worried. The cracks inside the NRM camp have also emboldened the NUPs to soldier on.
For instance, NRMs like Ddwaniro Sub County LC3 Chairman Kasule Photoman aka the Yellow Man Abiriga and Lwamagwa’s Ahmed Mbabazi are so angry with the Gyavira Ssemwanga camp to the extent that they are considering running as independents so as to be able to campaign freely while fraternizing the NUP camp where it pays to do so. All these are encouraging signs among the Grace Nalubega-led foot soldiers.
They are praying hard that Asha Kayanja and Kinyamatama fight for the Rakai Woman MP slot so that their Grace Nalubega, who has been fighting for the same seat for years, finally gets her way to Parliament. Having been a victim of electoral injustices for such a long time, since the Mutagamba days, Grace Nalubega has a lot of sympathies even including key players inside the NRM.
Many are convinced that suppressing her win this time round will come at a very big cost for the ruling NRM, whose very unpopular Juliet Kinyamatama angered many voters when she harassed and demanded that Nalubega, a mere teacher, pays up millions that were awarded to her as damages at the conclusion of the unsuccessful electoral petition the NUP Rakai iron lady had filed against her in 2021. Voters raised the money and got Nalubega off the hook.
And Museveni government’s failure or refusal to deliver effective social services like roads, electricity, education, schools and hospitals to poverty-stricken Rakai district (which has been their bastion of support since 1986) has greatly simplified political messaging by NUP spin doctors and propagandists in Rakai.
In fact, its this effective criticism of the regime that explains why many leading NUP foot soldiers can no longer be hosted on KBS, which is Rakai’s only radio station whose owners are NRM-inclined. Many of them, like Grace Nalubega, speak on Kabaka’s CBS, Buddu fm and other radios that are situated far away from Rakai itself.
There are also ethnic tensions whereby voters especially in Buyamba County see political actors from Kooki County as a group that has over eaten and marginalized others for such a long time. Yet these are grievances Gyavira Ssemwanga doesn’t have the balls to keep amplifying fearing being misunderstood and reprisals from Gen Museveni’s State House. This also explains why NUP’s free-speaking Osborn Desire Kayima stands higher chances to successfully upstaging Gyavira Ssemwanga (and mark you both of them originally belonged to the opposition and had a liking for Kizza Besigye’s FDC). (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
