Why January 15th elections should be a bit easier for Museveni

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OPINION

By Dr Willy Turyahikayo

On Thursday, January 15, 2026, there are 21,681,491 registered Ugandans who will once again go to the polls to elect the president and members of parliament to drive Uganda to 2031.

I am happy that the last one in the registered figure is actually me, without whom, the electoral commission would have an even number. In fact, given the principle of 50% plus one, this is how important each one of us is and why we should all turn up to vote. 

This political term is significant because at the global level, it is the last term that should take the country to the end of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the national level, the term takes the country to the final Third of our vision 2040. I wish all the candidates success, but it seems easier for President Museveni this time around! 

Why do I say that it should be easier for Museveni to sail through? I want to look at the manifestos of two major competing political parties: The National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the National Unity Platform (NUP). The fundamental principle of making a manifesto is that one must identify the already existing potentials which can be harnessed to achieve the desired goal.

On this account, the National Unity Platform fails because the Manifesto fails to scan the environment to identify what has been achieved so far as a springboard for their agenda. This may be a political strategy, but they find it hard to answer the question “how” when it comes to their promises.

In a number of cases, NUP diagnoses the problems such as unemployment, corruption, low productivity, poverty, healthcare gaps and many others very well, but does not offer any treatment. Indeed, the manifesto is only full of lamentations.

For example, the unemployment problem is mentioned three times in the NUP manifesto, but the appropriate strategies against it remain rather flimsy. It is true, as identified by NUP, that University graduates continue to roam the streets looking for jobs, and it is also true that many have been forced to seek work in the Middle East as domestic workers or security guards under exploitative and abusive conditions.  After identifying this, NUP fails to offer a remedy. Saying that NUP will create 10million jobs by 2032 without answering the fundamental question of “how” leaves the statement a wishful imagination.

Incidentally, the NRM also mentions unemployment three times in its manifesto. The difference is that in all three times, NRM tries to offer a detailed plan for reducing unemployment through increasing labour productivity, gainful employment, and skilling.  NRM is only missing cadres who can explain this to the lowest person at LCI, but rather depends on President Museveni’s rallies.

If 57% of Ugandans face food insecurity and 80% of the land is arable, what policy alternatives does NUP have in increasing food production? Manifesto priority number six for NUP talks of establishing a public-school feeding program to transform agriculture, ensure food security, enhance education outcomes and support a healthy population.

While reading this chapter, one fails to trace how a school feeding program will transform agriculture! This section is full of statistics from UBOS, FAO, ILRI, UNDP, NARO etc. that we already know. While this was done to paint a picture of a poorly performing sector, the manifesto would have gone further to propose alternative policy prescriptions. In a number of cases, the write-up in this section was a copy and paste from official government reports that show the performance of the agricultural sector. For example, NUP quotes figures showing improvements in pig population, poultry and goat farming that have meat and egg production. This is shooting one’s foot!  

An outline of about 20 promises by NUP in the manifesto was done, but this is so brief that campaign managers find it hard to convince voters. On the flip side, NRM gives a detailed promise of what they want to do on each of the major themes in the manifesto. This makes it easier for their local council campaign managers to converse for support.

In addition to the Manifesto, the mathematics favours Museveni. There are seventy-one thousand two hundred and fourteen (71,214) villages in Uganda. The National Resistance Movement has six leadership structure committee, each with five members, translating to 30 supporters in each village. This translates to Two million One Hundred Thirty-Six Thousand Four Hundred Twenty (2,136,420) voters in the country.

There is another category that will most likely vote for President Museveni- the beneficiaries of PDM. There are 10,717 parishes in the country. Assuming that 100 individuals have received funds in each parish for the last three years, it would translate to Three Million Two Hundred Fifteen Thousand One Hundred (3,215,100) beneficiaries.

Although not all these are NRM supporters, they form a big chunk of Museveni’s voters and is also likely to change the minds of the hitherto non-NRM supporters. In brief, Museveni should wake up on 15th January with more than five million (5m) votes. The only challenge is that President Museveni’s people fail to convert all these into actual votes. I suspect about four reasons. Museveni’s core team is either busy, does not share his vision, does not read and explain his manifesto to voters or is incompetent.

The writer is a consultant in agricultural and rural innovations systems

wturyahikayo@mubs.ac.ug