In 2021, when the National Resistance Movement (NRM) polled 35.91 per cent in the national vote, no one could have anticipated a performance in the next election cycle that would garner 49.25 per cent.
‘The losses suffered by the NRM party in Buganda Sub-region in 2021 during the election cycle were big, but we quickly diagnosed the problem by first of all accepting the defeat,’ Ms Rose Namayanja Nsereko, the ruling party’s deputy secretary general and a key architect of the ‘Buganda for Museveni’ campaign strategy, told Saturday Monitor. ‘The truth was that voters had issues that partly informed their decision to deny us the vote on top of the Opposition propaganda machinery of the time,’ she added.
The improvement by nearly 14 percentage points in the bastion of the National Unity Platform (NUP) was down to, reckons Ms Namayanja, a change of tack. For the first time in the history of the NRM, the party did not seek the services of an appointed national taskforce for the 2026 campaign but instead went for a grassroots mobilisation strategy. Planting its roots in villages, the teams that were stitched together had non-candidates, including ex officio members, former Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) from the respective areas and party cadres. ‘We are talking about more than 300 people actively mobilising for the NRM party at the grassroots in a particular area.
These people had earlier been briefed about the service delivery programme and were equipped with the right messages as feedback to the voters, but we also had the Parish Development Model (PDM) as a magic bullet,’ Ms Namayanja revealed. The ruling party also managed to hit the jackpot by convincing a number of Independents aligned to it to step down in favour of NRM flagbearers in Buganda. As many as 128 Independents stepped down following the intervention of Yoweri Museveni, the party chairperson. This was further augmented by the palpable divisions within the Opposition’s ranks, per Mr Godfrey Kiwanda Ssubi, the former NRM party national vice chairperson for Central Region.
No pandemic blues
Mr Kiwanda, a key party national mobiliser for Buganda region, added: ‘We swallowed our pride as the top party, and went back to the drawing board to identify the key challenges that possibly affected the NRM party performance in 2021.’ Among the key issues that rocked the NRM, noted Mr Kiwanda, were ‘the rampant land evictions and land grabbing, poverty-related changes.’ The panacea to those, heading into the 2026 poll, was ‘the PDM, Emyooga, among other wealth creation programmes.’
‘Unlike the 2021 General Election cycle where the country was fighting the Covid-19 pandemic-related challenges, including the lockdown that angered a big percentage of the citizens, the year 2026 has been different,’ Mr Kiwanda reasoned. As the country’s business arm, Buganda was bound to be imperilled by the pandemic curbs. Residents of Buganda, Mr Kiwanda further offered, had no other way to vent their anger than to vote against the sitting government for the restrictions and the attendant impacts.
‘Many people who lost their respective businesses turned their anger against the government and the ruling NRM party. There is a possibility the angered population carried their frustration to their respective polling stations with an aim of voting out the NRM government,’ Mr Kiwanda told the Saturday Monitor, banking largely on anecdotal evidence that this publication could not independently verify.
Youth factor?
Sheikh Kassim Kamigisha, a former Resident City Commissioner (RCC) attached to Nakawa Division and Member of the Patriotic League of Uganda, believes that NRM party has since evolved into a stronger and focused political party. He added that it has managed to adapt to the country’s pro-active youthful population. ‘In 2021, the NRM party did not have an active youth wing, a factor that had previously left the youthful population almost lost. When we talk about Buganda and the other urban areas, the NRM party has brought on board the youth with strong structures at different levels.
The youth have clearly grasped the well packaged message on the skilling programme with the assurance that they can become entrepreneurs and self-employed.’ But Mr Peter Kahindi, a lawyer, public policy analyst, believes that the NRM party of 2021 is possibly not the more vibrant and pro-active party that has realised that the voters have real genuine issues that need to be resolved. When you figure out the ‘Buganda for Museveni’ arrangement that brought together different stakeholders to explain the different government programmes and respond to the emerging issues, the voters felt their unanswered questions had finally got to the right people, he told Saturday Monitor.
‘When you allow the village based structures to freely engage with the voters from their respective areas, the people will freely air out their concerns and perhaps get to find the solutions. For the service delivery programs, the respective local government officials are put to task to explain the service delivery gap and possibly get to the solution. This created a big impact. The fact that the NRM party learnt how to build cohesion and work as a team worked against the Opposition,’ he said.
Opposition reacts
Mr Denis Ssekabira, the Member of Parliament for Katikamu North Constituency in Luweero District, however, is quick to dismiss the alleged NRM party gains. He told Saturday Monitor that the ruling party has failed to differentiate between the government programmes and the party activities. This, he adds, is to the disadvantage of the vulnerable population. ‘When they the government through the Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries recently procured the hand hoes to be distributed to the different households under the District Local government structures, the programme was hijacked by the NRM party. The hoes ended up in the hands of the NRM candidates as campaign tools for vote hunting.
This is unfortunate,’ he opined. Ms Catherine Nabawanuka, a resident of Bombo Town Council in Luweero District, attributed the ruling party’s success to luck. She agreed with Mr Kiwanda’s observation that Opposition political parties, mostly NUP, have become disorganised and do not have leadership units in place to handle internal disunity in a more mature manner. ‘I don’t believe that the NRM has really worked hard as far as service delivery is concerned, but we have a weak Opposition. Some of the voters in the Luweero now believe that the Opposition has no future and have turned back to the NRM party. We have patiently tested the Opposition but the results are not any better. It is better to rely on the government side,’ she told the Saturday Monitor.
The 2026 gains Yet the inroads the NRM has made cannot be contested. In 2021, NUP, the leading Opposition party, swept the three legislative positions for Bukomansimbi District. But the 2026 General Election saw the ruling party win the three seats back, including that of the District Woman Representative (DWR), Bukomansimbi South and Bukomansimbi North. In Nakaseke District, the NRM party took the Nakaseke South and Nakaseke Central seats that had been in the hands of NUP. Ms Namayanja said the NRM party strategic mobilisation is not only reflected in the number of MPs that the party has gained in Buganda but that the rise in the voter percentage is a clear indication that the party is ‘a people’s party.’
While the NRM party struggled to get Members of Parliament in the Kampala area, with all the positions falling back to the Opposition in 2021, the 2026 election cycle brought slightly better dividends. ‘We have three Parliament seats in Kampala and we expect to harvest more leadership positions. The people of Kampala are rejecting the Opposition lies, long fed to the population,’ Ms Rosemary Sseninde, who is in charge of national mobilisation at the NRM secretariat, told the Saturday Monitor.
She discloses that some of the strategies employed included engaging the voters using the village based committees. The party’s youth mobilisation drive hit the bullseye as did the PDM. In Buganda, 514,000 households had by December 2025 accessed the PDM funds through their respective Saccos. The land related challenges have reportedly been given a priority through the different offices. The Opposition, however, says that, with anecdotal evidence pointing to many bribery and intimidation cases, there is more than meets the eye.