Museveni in Nwoya, Omoro as voters seek human-wildlife conflict solutions

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President Yoweri Museveni is Tuesday, October 21, 2025, in the districts of Nwoya and Omoro to solicit votes from the electorate ahead of the 2026 general election.

Nwoya has a population of 220,593 people scattered across the 11 sub-counties, 44 parishes and 121 villages.

⁠In the last general election, Nwoya had 57,186 registered voters; out of these, 26,692 (46.7%) voted.

Museveni, who is again standing on the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party ticket, polled 13,910 (55.3%) votes while his main challenger, Robert Kyagulanyi of the National Unity Platform party, garnered 5,732 (22.8%).

This time, Nwoya has 64,045 registered voters, an increase by 6,859.

In Omoro, the population is 207,339 scattered across 15 sub-counties/town councils, 65 parishes and 458 villages.

In the last general election, Omoro had 72,216 registered voters; out of these, 37,002 (51.2%) voted.

Museveni polled 20,902 (60.7%) votes while Kyagulanyi got 7,169 (20.8%).  ⁠In 2025, Omoro has 86,550 registered voters, an increase of 14,334.

As part of government efforts to take services nearer to the people, Nwoya and Omoro districts were created in 2010 and 2015, respectively, after Parliament endorsed the split of Amuru and Gulu districts.

One of the key resources that Acholi-Nwoya has is the Murchison Falls National Park, which the district shares with districts in Bunyoro region, including Kiryandongo, Masindi and Buliisa. 

The park, with a variety of animals, including elephants, lions, leopards, buffalo and antelopes, covers about 30% of Nwoya district. Nwoya is bordered by Omoro and Oyam districts to the east, Kiryandongo and Buliisa (south), Pakwach (west) and Amuru (north). 

Despite the national park being a key source of revenue for the district, the local authorities and voters say the marauding elephants and buffalo have caused more harm than good to the communities around.

“I have witnessed elephants crossing from the park and destroying crops. Some people have been killed, and farmers now fear working in their gardens,” Denis Okema, a resident of Paduny ward in Anaka town council, said. 

Calling on the Government to fast-track the fencing of the national park, Nwoya political and civil administrators say the wild animals are devastating human life and destroying crops. 

On Friday, Emmanuel Orach, the Nwoya LC5 chairperson, said he had attended the burial of Doreen Akumu, a mother of seven, and Scovia Ayiyorwoth, who were killed by elephants in Obira village. 

About 13 people, Orach said, have been killed by elephants since October 2023 and acres of crops have been destroyed. 

“I am here to commensurate with the bereaved families. The two women were killed by elephants when they had gone to collect firewood. Akumu left behind seven children. Their father died earlier.

Recovery programmes

Nwoya and Omoro are located in the Acholi region, which suffered two decades of the Lord’s Resistance Army’s (LRA) brutal insurgency. The insurgency started in 1987 under the command of Joseph Kony.

The LRA relied heavily on the abduction of children for use as soldiers and atrocities against the civilian population were commonplace.

During the conflict, cattle rustling led to increased poverty in the area and some of the area’s young people grew up in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs), which led to interrupted transitions to adulthood.

After the conflict, many communities had reduced access to education and health services, owing to the absence of qualified staff. Infrastructure such as roads and transport links, was devastated too.

Insecurity was a campaign bait for the opposition in the region during the 1996 and 2001 general elections. However, the return of peace in 2006 turned out to be President Museveni and his NRM’s masterpiece in the region.

Since 2011, the NRM Government has been executing war recovery programmes through the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) II and the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP II).

NUSAF and PRDP are affirmative action programmes meant to rehabilitate northern Uganda. Under these programmes, the government built tarmac roads, constructed classrooms and teachers’ houses, as well as supplied desks and sinking boreholes so that people have water.

It also distributed heifers, bulls and oxen as well as facilitating the return of IDPs to their ancestral homes. In addition, the government also provided a resettlement package to some returnees.

These recovery programmes helped President Museveni win massively for the first time in the entire northern region.

Of the total 5,851,037 votes that the President garnered across the country as the NRM candidate, 1,164,550 were from northern Uganda, making up 67.95% of the total votes garnered from the region by all the 11 presidential candidates.