📷 Elections 2026:  Museveni  warns against war threats

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President Yoweri Museveni has said there will be no more wars in Uganda.

"The army has already stopped war. There will be no war in Uganda," he said on Friday (October 24) while addressing a campaign rally at Lt. Gen. Paul Lokech Memorial Stadium in Agago town council, Agago district.

"I saw something in the papers (news)  today that some of the political groups say they will start war. If anybody starts war, he will go to Gehenna (hell)," he told thousands of his supporters.

Museveni, who is standing on the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party ticket, warned that war is chaotic and destroys so many things.

He wrapped up his 2026 general election campaign in the Acholi sub-region, which bore the brunt of the Lord's Resistance Army's brutal insurgency and cattle rustling by armed Karimojong.

The President heard from district party leaders that the problem of cattle rustling still persists, but vowed to solve it once and for all.

"We have the capacity to finish all this," he said, responding to complaints about cattle rustling in the region.

Late afternoon, he headed to Abim district in the Karamoja sub-region to hold his last rally of the day.

This second rally will mark the start of his campaign trail in the region.

Museveni, 81, has led Uganda, a nation known as the “the Pearl of Africa”, uninterrupted since January 1986 when he and his guerrilla force, which he was commanding, the National Resistance Army, seized power after a five-year bush war.

He took power against the background of a decade of brutality of Idi Amin’s regime, and has been putting his fate in the hands of his party and in the hands of the people.

Analysts say he remains a central figure in Uganda’s politics, and his strongest card is stability.

For nearly four decades, Museveni has kept the country largely peaceful compared to the turbulent years of coups and insurgencies that defined Uganda’s past.

“The defeat of rebel groups, and his role in regional security, make him a familiar and reassuring choice for those who fear instability,” Crispin Kaheru, a political analyst and member of the Uganda Human Rights Commission, says.

In the last general election, Museveni obtained 47,696 (74.57%) votes in Agago while his main challenger Robert Kyagulanyi of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party garnered 10,559 (16.51%).  

In Abim, the incumbent President polled 18, 254 (77.39%) votes while Kyagulanyi got 3,956 16.77%).