Last week, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, the National Unity Platform (NUP) president and presidential candidate for the 2026 elections, paid homage to Dr Apollo Milton Obote’s tomb at Akokoro, Apac district.
His visit and the antics he pulled off, without a doubt, surprised the locals and diehards of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) – the party that he and his colleagues at Makerere – Kavule have been demonising for years.
Being on a campaign trail in Lango, the heart of UPC, Kyagulanyi sought to appease the local population, and as well take advantage of the failed attempt by former first son, and MP, Jimmy Akena, to get onto the presidential ballot. He failed miserably on this front as the locals left him and a few hundred ‘foot soldiers’, and journalists he travelled with from Kampala.
The visit was also intended to send a strong message to Buganda Kingdom to which the NUP leadership has spent the past four years fighting both directly and indirectly.
Buganda has never forgiven Obote for the 1966 attack on the Kabaka’s Mengo palace and the subsequent abolition of kingdoms. The then Kabaka, Sir Edward Muteesa II, fled into exile in Britain where Obote’s agents followed him and killed him three years later.
Here we are with a self-proclaimed “Omubanda wa Kabaka” saluting the man who desecrated Buganda Kingdom, robbed, demonised and insulted the Baganda.
Before Kyagulanyi’s pilgrimage to the Obote tomb, a host of NUP leaders, notably the Mityana Municipality MP, Francis Zaake, sent out messages urging their supporters to shun Buganda activities.
He was particularly not happy with Buganda loyalists who go Mengo to support the various kingdom activities under the _Luwalo lwange_ programme. “What has the Katikkiro benefited you?” He asked rhetorically. ” He said, instead of going to Mengo, they should instead be going to Magere, Kyagulanyi’s home.
Kyagulanyi himself has previously made insinuations that he is above the Kabaka because he naively believes that he has a national appeal yet the Kabaka’s doesn’t go beyond the boundaries of Buganda Kingdom.
At campaign rallies, press conferences or social media, the NUP campaign to undermine Buganda is in high gear. This is the outcome of a recent meeting of the party’s top executives, and it is not just about the person of the Katikkiro Charles Peter Mayiga and CBS FM radio – it extends to other initiatives by the kingdom such the popular Masaza cup among others.
Late in April 2024, weeks after that year’s Kabaka Mutebi’s birthday celebrations, the now jailed NUP deputy spokesman, Alex Waiswa Mufumbiro, while appearing on an evening talk show _Namwatulira_ on Pearl FM, said that NUP will not hesitate to abolish kingdoms once it comes into power.
“I cannot understand why these kingdoms believe and behave like they are so important to the country… we shall do away with them when we get into power. It will not be the first time they will be abolished; in 1966, they were abolished, didn’t Uganda go on, and did it die without useless kings, like those we have now,” Mufumbiro said.
While Kyagulanyi has tried to deny his anti-Buganda schemes, the pilgrimage to Akokoro to seek the blessings of Obote’s ghost, confirms Mufumbiro’s statement above.
