Abavandimwe take President Museveni campaign to Nakasongola, Nakaseke

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Indigenous Banyarwanda, commonly known as Abavandimwe, are set to hit the campaign trail in the districts of Nakasongola and Nakaseke this weekend to canvass votes for President Yoweri Museveni.

Frank Gashumba, the chairperson of the Council for Abavandimwe, a non-profit body advocating for the rights of Indigenous Banyarwanda, revealed this in an exclusive interview with New Vision Online on Wednesday, December 24, 2025.

“It is Saturday [December 27] and Sunday that we are resuming,” he disclosed.

The move follows a similar mobilisation drive at Zeu Hotel in Mayuge earlier this week, where Gashumba urged residents to safeguard the peace ushered in by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government by voting for the ‘Old man with a hat’.

While it can be argued that peace manifests due to the mercy of the divine God, Gashumba yesterday contended that it takes sober and able leadership for it to prevail.

“Actually, I don’t think there is any country in Africa that you can compare to Uganda in terms of peace. That’s why Uganda is flooded with refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Eritrea, South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR),” he said.

Adding that while there remain challenges to be fixed, this cannot be ignored.  

“Churches cannot open on Sunday if gunshots are ringing all over. Same with mosques. All these new universities are coming up because there is peace in the country. So, I implored people of Busoga to vote for peace,” he argued. 

Call centre

The move comes nearly three weeks after Abavandimwe, under the ‘Tuzamutora Yoweri’ (We shall vote Yoweri), vowed to establish a communication centre dedicated to mobilising votes for President Yoweri Museveni.

The announcement came during a meeting with students drawn from various universities at Speke Hotel’s Rock Gardens on December 7, 2025.

“Beginning January, it will operate 24 hours a day, and we shall need personnel who can speak three to four languages, Luganda, Kinyarwanda, and others. From January 15, it will be active until the elections are done. If any of you encounter a problem in Mutukula, we will alert the District Police Commander. If it happens in Masindi, the same thing,” Gashumba hinted.

Call centres, which are a new innovation in Uganda’s political landscape, serve multiple purposes. Including mobilising voters, countering misinformation, responding to intimidation and tracking voter issues.

Interest based politics

Utilising the same juncture, Gashumba also urged the students, most of whom are Indigenous Banyarwanda, to take their studies seriously.

“Among you, I see ministers, army and police commanders, successful women and men. But it will not happen if you don’t take your studies seriously,” he advised.

He argued that after delivering a block vote for Museveni, they, like any other ethnic group in Uganda, would be in a position to demand their fair share of the national cake.

“Another thing, don’t look down on any job,” Gashumba pointed out.

“After Yoweri wins, we shall demand jobs from him. We have a stake in this country just like the Baganda, Acholi, Langi and Iteso. Teso sub-region has six ministers, a Vice President, a Speaker and a Deputy Chief of Defence Forces (CDF). Whom do we have? That is what we shall demand after electing him. We also want jobs in the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), Civil Aviation and thirty Resident District Commissioners (RDCs). That is what they call voting for interests, not fwaa (anyhow),” he contended.

Protecting the gains

Speaking about interests, Ntoroko Resident District Commissioner (RDC) Cyrus Ngarambe Muzeeyi said the youth have much to appreciate about the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government, given the strides the country has made in various spheres of life.

“We used to have three or four universities then. We had Makerere, Nkumba, MUBS was a business school and Kyambogo. As we speak now, we have over 63 universities. The question if things had remained as they were, where would you be studying? That is a gain in itself,” Ngarambe cited.

Adding that as individuals, they need to ask themselves if there was no stability and education had not been prioritised.

“I have heard many of you pursuing powerful courses. But my dear, in those days it was not easy to go to Makerere and get that course; you are studying at another university.  The problem with your generation is that you forget too quickly. I may not blame you. But perhaps you have not taken time to understand what is going on. Today, someone can even afford to pay a course of Sh5 million per semester or tri-semester,” Ngarambe alluded.

Students leaders speak out

Several students who attended the event, including Emmanuel Byilingiro from Victoria University, pledged to deliver votes to President Yoweri Museveni.

Whom he credited for resolving their citizenship dilemma, which had seen many unfairly denied passports and national identity cards by errant Ministry of Internal Affairs officials on the grounds that they were foreigners.

Consequently, some, like Byilingiro were forced to seek cover in other tribes for fear of suffering the same fate.

However, on January 23 this year, President Yoweri Museveni issued Executive Order No. 1 of 2025 streamlining passport issuance following outcry from the community.

When it became clear that the order had reportedly been sidestepped, he followed it up with another directive on March 11, 2025, in which he emphasised that all applicants must be treated equally, regardless of ethnicity.

“The difficult came when I was getting my National ID. When I was applying as a Munyarwanda, they never accepted for seven good years. From there, that’s when I had to change to a Mufumbira. But with the coming of the Executive Order the President signed and with the effort of the Council for Abavandimwe, I am now a Munyarwanda, and I have my passport,” Byilingiro retorted.

“I went back, put in an affidavit and told them this, and this happened, but I am a Munyarwanda, which NIRA (National Identification & Registration Authority) and the court recognised... My documents were taken to Internal Affairs, they were all checked, and I was accepted as a citizen of Uganda,” he added.

It should be noted that indigenous Banyarwanda are listed in the third schedule of the 1995 Constitution, as number 24 among the sixty-five native ethnic groups of the country.

Under the law, only those whose parents or ancestors belonged to the indigenous communities listed above are citizens by birth.

Fraudulent acquisition of passports

While he does not dispute these sickening reports, Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson Simon Mundeyi told New Vision Online in an exclusive interview on June 18, 2025, that they had also registered cases of Rwandan nationals posing as Indigenous Banyarwanda of Uganda to fraudulently acquire Ugandan passports.

“We have plenty of them. We compiled a list of them. I think, at one moment, we were supposed to interface with those people in the presence of the President and say ‘look, these people are now abusing the executive order’…. We have systems here," Mundeyi stated. 

Adding "If you have a document from the other side and used it to cross to Uganda, it means you entered as a foreigner, and the system has you as a person from the other side."

While the Ugandan constitution entitles every Ugandan to the right to a passport or other travel documents, the Uganda Citizenship and Immigration Control Act stipulates that a person who obtains a passport through fraud, false representation, or concealment of material facts may face a prison sentence of not less than five years.