By Brenda Namukuta

The 2021 general elections have ended with a lot of surprises.

Out of 11 districts in Busoga region, President Yoweri Museveni won in only three districts of Kaliro, Namutumba and Buyende. Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu won in the eight districts of Kamuli, Jinja, Luuka, Mayuge, Iganga, Bugweri, Bugiri and Namayingo. Busoga used to be and continues to be NRM and President Yoweri Museveni’s stronghold.

We may have performed poorly in the presidential elections, but the NRM scored excellently in parliamentary elections, winning over 99% of the seats in Parliment. While some people may say the low sugarcane prices may have contributed to this poor performance by President Yoweri Museveni, in my view, the biggest contribution to the poor results in Busoga is the failure of the leaders to explain to the people the achievements of NRM and President Museveni in the region.

President Museveni has done a lot in Kaliro district. First he advocated that Kaliro district be carved out of Kamuli district in order to bring services closer to the people. He made sure each of the original sub-counties of Kaliro — that is Bumanya, Namwiwa, Gadumire, Namugongo, Kasokwe and Nawaikoke get a health centre III to deliver health services to the people. Recently, when these sub-counties were further sub-divided into 15, 12 have got a health centre III to deliver health services to the people.

Bumanya has a health centre IV.

When it comes to the road network, President Museveni helped Kaliro to construct Saaka bridge to connect us to Pallisa district and the greater eastern region all the way to Kenya to facilitate trade. He was fulfilling the NRM’s policy of an East African Federation and connecting us to a larger market.

In the education sector, Kaliro district had only one governmentaided secondary school — Budini SSS. Today, Kaliro has eight government-aided secondary schools. Plans are underway to build a seed school in each sub-county. We had less than five primary schools in the whole district but there are plans to build a school in each of the 183 parishes of Kaliro district.

Today, we have 89 government-aided primary schools in Kaliro, offering free primary education.

These are achievements of the NRM and President Museveni.

We focused on these achievements and the people got to know what they were. In the end, the people voted for President Yoweri Museveni, who got 38,800 votes, a share of 56%.

NRM also won all the three parliamentary seats of Bulamogi North West, Bulamogi constituency and Kaliro District Woman MP, where I was elected on the NRM ticket with 38,844 votes.

NRM has done a lot in Busoga, including the construction of a network of roads, especially tarmac roads like Jinja-Kamuli, Iganga-Kaliro, Iganga-Namutumba and Mayuge-Namayingo- Busia. There are also new sugar factories in the districts of Kamuli, Kaliro and Mayuge, providing employment for the people and a market for the sugarcane produced in the Busoga region. We now need to lobby for the tarmacking of the Kaliro-Pallisa road, Kaliro- Kamuli road, Kaliro-Buwenge (Jinja) road, Kaliro-Buyende road, repair of Saaka bridge and upgrade of Lumbuye bridge.

Bumanya Health Centre IV also needs to be upgraded into a district hospital. In future, NRM leaders should do more explaining and educating people about the achievements of NRM.

The writer is the Kaliro District Woman MP-Elect