An octogenarian who has ruled our country, Uganda since the 1986 cannot risk a free vote, not after decades of economic exclusion, militarised politics, and power reduced to a family enterprise. Rigging was not strategy. It was self-preservation.
Start with Karamoja.
In Lopei Subcounty, Napak District, people are still dying from jiggers caused by extreme poverty, poor sanitation, and state neglect. This is not a remote past. This is Uganda today. Children walk barefoot.
Health centres are under-equipped. Hunger is the order of the day.
Now travel to Kiruhura, Museveni’s home area.
There, wealth is concentrated, infrastructure is modern, land ownership is expansive, and skyscrapers pierce the skyline. Roads are paved. Investment flows, the contrast is obscene.
This is not development.
It is selective prosperity.
Karamoja has suffered for decades under Museveni’s rule—disarmament without protection, food insecurity without safety nets, militarisation without development. Then, in a final insult, Museveni appointed his wife as Minister for Karamoja.
Let that sink in.
After decades of neglect, one of the poorest regions in our country was handed to the First Family, not for justice, but for political containment. Poverty was no longer a national failure—it became a family-managed portfolio.
This is why Museveni had to rig the January 15 election.
Because a fair election would have asked questions he cannot answer:
• How do you rule for over 40 years while entire regions remain trapped in 18th-century living conditions?
• How do you keep power while millions are locked out of opportunity?
• Why does development follow bloodlines instead of citizens?
Museveni did not rig because he is popular. He rigged because his criminal actions have exposed him over time.
Exposed the myth of stability.
Exposed the lie of shared prosperity.
Exposed a regime that survives not on merit or consent, but on force, fear, intimidation and fraud.
A dictator who must rig after 40 years is not a unifier, he is a huge liability.
Our country, Uganda is not unstable because Museveni might leave. Uganda is unstable because he refuses to. A nation cannot breathe when one man is stepping on its neck and suffocating it.
Talk of state capture? Uganda has been captured for nearly half a century.
