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Makindye East seat: Will Nyeko survive 2026?
Makindye East Derrick Nyeko speaks on the floor of Parliament during a plenary session recently.
What you need to know:
- Historically, Makindye East voters have gained notoriety for tossing out their lawmakers after just one term. The same fate could be waiting for Derrick Nyeko from the National Unity Platform party.
Perhaps to easily mobilise their supporters to correctly vote for their rather unknown candidates during the 2021 General Election, National Unity Platform (NUP) party officials told voters to simply vote for any candidate who had the umbrella as their symbol. And they did, at least in central Uganda where the so-called ‘umbrella wave’ brought with it nearly 60 parliamentary seats while sweeping several Local Government and city positions.
Three years after the ‘umbrella wave’, the general consensus is that a number of political leaders elected on the NUP ticket were and remain undercooked.Road to 2026 has previously captured disappointment in Parliament first-timers like Aloysious Mukasa (Lubaga South), Abubaker Kawalya (Lubaga North) and Bashir Kazibwe Mbaziira (Kawempe South). The sentiments we captured in Makindye East seem to indicate that Derrick Nyeko also belongs to this category.
When the 2021 General Election was nearing, Nyeko, at the time 29, was unknown to many people across Kampala City. But thanks to the notion of unquestioningly endorsing any candidate with an umbrella as their symbol, Nyeko garnered 20,455 votes en route to beating veteran politicians such as ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM)’s Elijah Kailukabi Owobusingye,
who came second with 14,815 votes; the incumbent from Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Ibrahim Kasozi,who came third with 9,117 votes; and veteran politician Michael Mabikke, who came a
distant fourth with a paltry 4,352 votes.
Nyeko’s NRM past By his admission, before jumping onto the People Power bandwagon, which later morphed into NUP, Nyeko was an NRM youth winger. He ran as a youth councillor for Makindye Urban Council, a position he won. In fact, he was the NRM’s youth council publicity secretary for Kampala. But as the People Power movement gained traction with the youth in Buganda, he decamped and severed links to Pastor Robert Kayanja, who is known for being a pro-establishment. Nyeko has previously said it wasn't easy winning over the Opposition radicals.
“When I joined People Power, I didn’t come alone. I joined with so many other young people from the NRM. I was given an obligation to be the coordinator for Kampala, Mukono and
Wakiso, which I delivered perfectly,” Nyeko revealed in a previous interview, adding: “[Robert Ssentamu] Kyagulanyi [the NUP leader also known as Bobi Wine] used to say they were going to see people according to their deeds; not words. So, it’s from that perspective that they chose me because I can deliver.”
Yet for the period he has been in the House, Nyeko has struggled to maintain a footprint in the constituency that he claims to have delivered to NUP through his foot soldier abilities. One of the most dominant accusations against Nyeko is that once he got into Parliament, he forgot the foot soldiers who canvassed the 20,455 votes he garnered.
“Once he got into Parliament, he forgot about us and the constituency. We have never heard of him. He promised many things, but he never delivered,” one of Nyeko’s former assistants told this writer on condition of anonymity, adding that voters are saying they would vote any other person that NUP fronts but not Nyeko.
Accused
One of the foot soldiers Nyeko is accused of abandoning is Olivia Lutaaya, who was among the NUP long-time prisoners who capitulated before the General Court Martial and admitted charges of treachery.
Lutaaya and her co-accused, who number in the tens, were consequently in October given a sentence of three months and 22 days in prison.
Nyeko insists he never abandoned any foot soldier since he was among the people who showed up at the General Court Martial to stand surety for Lutaaya, the poster girl of the prisoners. He also defends himself against accusations that he has abandoned the constituency.
“If you are talking about a person who has abandoned the constituency then you can follow up on their social media page to verify if they have been in the constituency or not. The challenge we are having in this current term is that we are expected to be everywhere. There is a leadership gap—the government isn’t delivering and everybody looks for their
leader for each and everything. Let it be health, education, rent and all these other challenges. It’s a challenge we have managed to address and people have been able to understand the situation we are in,” Nyeko told this piublication.
Other hopefuls
If Nyeko is looking for his opponents who want to make him a one-term lawmaker, he should first look from within his party. Muhammad Wasswa Mwanje, a Makindye East Councillor, has made it clear that he is interested in Nyeko’s job.
“Makindye East is used to having very vocal MPs. The history is very clear. Makindye has never had such an MP who can’t make his case on the floor of Parliament yet for me who has been at
City Hall, I am more vocal than him,” Mwanje, who rode on the camel before he was sworn in at City Hall in 2021,said.
The people who are famed for representing Makindye East are mainly from the Opposition, starting with John Ssebaana Kizito, the former Democratic Party (DP) supremo who represented the constituency in the Constituent Assembly that midwifed the 1995 Uganda Constitution.
In 1996, Ssebaana surrendered his Makindye East seat without a fight to Benedict Mutyaba, a former managing dire ctor of Uganda Airlines, after DP decided not to participate in the parliamentary elections on grounds that President Museveni had cheated its presidential candidate, Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere.
Although outspoken, Mutyaba’s one-term tenure as a lawmaker was riddled with scandals to the extent that Winnie Byanyima, then Mbarara Municipality MP, asked him together with Isaac Musumba (Buzaya) to resign their chairmanships of the House committees on Natural Resources and the Economy or be sacked "for placing themselves in a position where they can be compromised."
The two committee chairmen were at the centre of a growing controversy surrounding a trip they made to Norway at the invitation and expense of Norpak, a Norwegian company lobbying for a concession from the government to build a power dam on Karuma Falls on River Nile. From Mutyaba to Mabikke Riddled with scandals, Mutyaba decided not to contest in 2001. This left the seat open for candidates such as Enos Tumusiime, Prof Ssemakula Kiwanuka, Muyanja Mulagwe, Henry Kiyega and a then youthful Mabikke, who belonged to the DP. The latter beat the odds to emerge victorious.
Driven with youthful energy, Mabikke represented Makindye East for two terms. Many observers say he was the architect of his political downfall when in 2011, under the auspices of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), he decided not to defend his parliamentary seat. He rather shifted his focus onto the Kampala Lord Mayorship slot, which proved to be a mountain for him as he couldn’t match Erias Lukwago, who had the backing of Opposition doyen Dr Kizza Besigye.
The 2011 parliamentary elections came with surprises as the NRM not only dominated the Lukwago-led council at City Hall but also saw two of its parliamentary candidates win constituencies and one of those was John Ssimbwa, who won Makindye East.
Followers of Makindye East politics attribute Ssimbwa’s victory not to the popularity of his party but to the Opposition that had many candidates who weren’t strong enough to consolidate an Opposition vote. This, they further reason, resulted in the splitting of votes.
Ssimbwa's luck ran out in 2016 as he was defeated by the FDC’s Kasozi, who polled 19,132 votes, with Dr Ian Clarke coming second with 8,776 votes. Ssimbwa came third with 7,733 votes, Owobusingye came fourth with 5,126 votes, whilst Mabikke came a distant fifth with 911 votes.
Push for NUP primaries
In 2021, Makindye East continued with its trend of making politicians one-term lawmakers when it threw out Kasozi for Nyeko as the ‘umbrella wave’ swept across Kampala and Buganda at large. Now some figures within NUP, like Mwanje, who like many politicians in Buganda was a DP member, want to make Nyeko a one-term lawmaker.
They insist that the party, which in 2020 didn’t organise primaries, should this time follow democratic principles and organise primaries. M w a n j e accuses Nyeko of being a Bobi Wine hanger-on.
“He is always tagging on Kyagulanyi because he wants the public to think he is very close to him, but that’s not the case. For us who are in the party, we know they are not close,” Mwanje said.
Yet, to Nyeko, being close to Kyagulanyi is a strength; not a weakness.
“I strongly believe in Kyagulanyi and I’m not ashamed to say that. The problem is those people [like Mwanje] came from DP bloc and they think us [from People Power] who have a belief in Kyagulanyi have a problem,” Nyeko said.
Even as Makindye East voters keep on tossing out incumbents, those who have previously held the seat aren’t giving up just yet. Kasozi, who has remained with the Najjanankumbi faction of the FDC, has made it clear that he is standing for the fourth time in 2026.
“I’m still in politics and I will stand again in Makindye East,” Kasozi, who is known to dole out money during election campaigns, recently confirmed.
Even Mabikke who has stood four times has made it clear he will be standing for the fifth time.
