Seasoned opposition leader and also the national vice president of the Democratic Party (DP) Fred Mukasa Mbidde has warned members of the opposition to be very careful with the decision taken by president Museveni to deploy his government Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka to command the political drive named Buganda for Museveni launched last week in Kiboga district.
According to Kiwanuka, the political drive is an initiative of the National Residence Movement (NRM) Buganda parliamentary caucus which aims to reclaim their party support and Museveni’s lost glory.
“We shall go around the entire region of Buganda to monitor government projects, highlight what has been done, and ask the people of Buganda to continue supporting NRM and President Museveni,” he said.
Before launching the political drive, Kiwanuka first moved around the Kampala Metropolitan district talking to NRM leaders and assessing how government projects like Parish Development model and Emyooga funds have impacted people’s lives.
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However, highly placed sources within the drive revealed to this website that the drive is aimed at preparing the region to welcome President Museveni’s coming tour to assess government projects which are expected to take place in the late April or early May 2025.
However, Mbidde insists that deploying Kiwanuka to command such a drive is a well calculated political move which the opposition should take seriously because it will affect them in the coming 2026 general elections.
“What I can tell you is that Museveni made a serious decision to deploy Kiwanuka to command that political drive.
One, for a long time, they have been preparing him to take over the mantle he is taking on now. Museveni has been assigning him classified campaign information and his analyses have been helping Museveni win presidential elections without making serious mistakes that can put his victory on the line,” Mbidde said.
He added that among the classified information Museveni assigned Kiwanuka are documents showing all the names and contacts of his clandestine mobilizers and operatives in each and every village in Buganda.
Currently, he is contacting them for a buildup on how to recover Buganda.
Mbidde said that in the documents given to Kiwanuka, Museveni explained through his private operatives the reasons why he was angry with those mobilizers and what he can do to rehabilitate them
“In the 2021 general elections, Museveni panicked over Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (Bobi Wine) declaration to contest against him because he had not yet studied him and the people behind him. It is for this reason that he made several political mistakes which even dented his international image after innocent Ugandans lost their lives. He doesn’t want a repeat of that in 2026,” a source said.
Among the mistakes Museveni made included abandoning his grassroot mobilizers and clandestine operatives in favour of comedians and musicians like Catherine Kusasira, Ronald Mayinja and social media bloggers thinking that they were going to help him to tame Bobi Wine.
Instead, they ended up damaging his image and making him their source of income given that they were costly to manage and added nothing on him.
Mbidde said that the only person who understands this new political drive is Kiwanuka and Ruth Nakabirwa Ssentamu the Minister of Energy and Mineral Development.
However, others are just getting on board because they think it will help them win political positions and get some money from Museveni.
Mbidde was supported by Muhammad Muwanga Kivumbi the Butambala County legislator and the NUP national deputy president in charge of Buganda who said that the coming election is going to be a protest vote against Museveni as people of Buganda will be telling Museveni that they are not happy with the way he discriminates them in his government when it comes to top government positions.
Kivumbi boasted that he is very sure that NUP will take over Buganda again come 2026 because Baganda cannot vote for Museveni whose government officials they accuse of influencing land grabbing, kidnap and torture of their children.
However, NRM Director for Information and Communication Emmanuel Lumala Dombo rubbished Kivumbi’s narratives explaining that Museveni dropped Baganda from top government offices because they were defeated in their respective constituencies in the 2021 elections.
He advised that if Buganda want to reclaim their government offices, they should vote for NRM come 2026.
Dombo also accused Kivumbi and other Buganda opposition leaders of being selfish and not advising and encouraging the people of Buganda to participate in government projects established to fight poverty and unemployment.
He blamed these leaders of doing everything to make sure that their people remain poor so that they can use them as a tool to beg and enrich themselves with billions of funds collected from Museveni’s government in terms of salaries and allowances.
Political commentator, Mubiru Njuuki advised president Museveni never to make a mistake by letting Buganda go in the hands of the opposition explaining that such a decision can result into the collapse of his government as it happened to president Idi Amin’s government in 1979 and Milton Obote in 1971 and 1985 respectively.
“You cannot ignore Buganda, Buganda is the engineer of any government in Uganda, it is a region where government administration offices are and contributes over 60% of the taxes collected countrywide. So, they can use their numbers and other factors to make the country is ungovernable. The president has to be very careful when taking decisions concerning Buganda” Njuuki said.
