Buganda NRM youth leaders to Museveni: Fire SG Lumumba or we join Bobi Wine’s NUP

Ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) youth leaders from Central Uganda want party chairman President Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni to fire secretary general Justine Kasule Lumumba over Bobi Wine’s Buganda victory.

Bobi Wine, real name Robert Kyagulanyi, of the National Unity Platform (NUP) swept the Buganda vote in both presidential and parliamentary elections of January 14.

NRM only managed 29 per cent (about 30 parliamentary seats) in Buganda while NUP’s majority of the 60 MPs-elect won Buganda constituencies.

Days after the elections, Lumumba sought to downplay NUP’s victory in Buganda, since NRM had won 316 of 498 seats (63 per cent) of the seats whose election results were out as of January 18.

But a section of NRM youth leaders from Buganda have threatened to defect to NUP if Museveni does not sack Lumumba.

Their leader Frank Serubiri, the NRM central region youth coordinator, told reporters in Kampala on March 15 that Lumumba had sidelined the youths in mobilization activities, leading to the party’s loss.

Serubiri further accused Lumumba of running the secretariat remotely, not listening to concerns from party leaders like him, and reluctance to open regional mobilization offices.

In his March 14 night address, Museveni claimed NRM vote protectors were so inefficient that they could not block Bobi Wine’s NUP from ‘massively’ cheating in Buganda.