Africa-Press – Uganda. President Museveni has been nominated by the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) to contest in next year’s presidential election, potentially extending his rule in Uganda to nearly half a century.
The party’s electoral commission chairperson, Dr Tanga Odoi, a former Makerere University professor, on Saturday, July 5, nominated Mr Museveni as both the party’s flag bearer in the 2026 national polls and its national chairperson for the next five years.
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Mr Museveni, who will be celebrating his 81st birthday on September 15, has been the leader of Uganda since 1986 when he seized power after leading a five-year guerrilla war.
The ruling party has changed the constitution twice in the past to allow Mr Museveni to extend his rule, and rights activists have accused him of using security forces and patronage to maintain his grip on power. However, he denies the accusation.
“I hope the whole membership of the NRM and its structures will support my candidature as the Chairman of the NRM for the 2025-2031 and also as flag-bearer for the NRM in the Presidential contest for the 2026-2031. Why? It is because I stand here on behalf of the very NRM that started as a student movement in 1965. That nascent student movement emerged in a very fragmented landscape, where polarisation was following tribes and religious denominations. That political fragmentation made governance impossible because no fragment could muster a majority in an election,” Mr Museveni said in his speech.
READ: Museveni’s official speech at NRM nomination
Moments before Mr Museveni’s motorcade snaked from Nakasero State Lodge in Kampala to the party’s electoral commission headquarters on Kyadondo Road at Plot 13, as he and his wife, Janet Kataha Museveni, who doubles as Education and Sports Minister, waved to waiting supporters in the country’s capital, several youths were rounded up by security operatives.
A traffic officer falls to the ground as he attempts to pursue a suspect near Nakasero Primary School in Kampala on July 5, 2025.
The suspect was among a group of youths claiming to be @NRMOnline supporters who turned rowdy and disrupted traffic near the school before police… pic.twitter.com/dYyK2rZSpo
Kampala Metropolitan Police Spokesperson, Mr Patrick Onyango, said at least 30 people had been detained at Kampala Central Police Station on different charges, including puffing marijuana and being a public nuisance.
Many of the suspects, mostly youths, were arrested near Nakasero Primary School in Kampala as they waited for the president.
“They were drinking waragi (alcohol) and puffing marijuana, maybe to get charged for the event (Museveni’s nomination). They are being held at Kampala Central Police Station on different charges. The event has gone on well without any major incident. Our officers are still in the field,” Mr Onyango told journalists in Kampala.
.@NRMOnline supporters react, several youths arrested as President Museveni, 80, heads to the party electoral commission offices in Kampala to be nominated as the party’s flag bearer ahead of the 2026 general election in which he seeks fo extend his leadership beyond four… pic.twitter.com/foAaz8p9zP
The arrests followed last week’s incidents in which several goons wearing NRM party T-shirts with the President’s portrait were filmed maiming and robbing bystanders as Mr Museveni picked nomination forms.
READ: Ex-CID boss Akullo attacked, robbed by goons in NRM T-shirts
Goons claim they were paid Shs10,000 to join Museveni rally, now in jail
Uganda will hold its presidential election next January, when voters will also elect their respective Members of Parliament.
The East African nation, which has one of the youngest populations globally, with over 78 per cent of its population under 30 and a median age of 16.9 years, has never witnessed a peaceful transfer of power from one president to another.
Mr Museveni’s closest opponent is widely expected to be pop star-turned-politician, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, the leader of National Unity Platform (NUP) , who came second in the last presidential election in 2021 and has already confirmed his intention to run in 2026.
Mr Kyagulanyi rejected the 2021 results, saying his victory had been stolen through ballot stuffing, intimidation by security forces and other irregularities.
Mr Kyagulanyi has over the last five years accused Mr Museveni’s regime of enforced disappearances and using state machinery to torture his supporters and other opposition members.
In the 2021 presidential polls, the country’s electoral commission declared Mr Museveni winner with 5.85 million votes, or 58.64 per cent, of the total votes cast, while Mr Kyagulanyi got 3.48 million votes or 34.83 per cent.
The voter turnout was 52 per cent.
Mr Museveni who was 76 at the time campaigned for a sixth term, arguing his long experience in office makes him a good leader while promising to keep delivering stability and progress while Mr Kyagulanyi who was 38 at the time galvanised young Ugandans with his calls for political change and pledged to end what he’s been calling dictatorship and widespread corruption.
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