The case for term limits in #Uganda! Part one of series:

Will Uganda have a peaceful presidential transition in my lifetime: the case for term limits in Uganda: part I:

As a child, my friends and I admired army people; especially Yoweri Museveni. After all, he was the only good soldier that we studied in primary school. I should perhaps mention that I took my primary leaving examinations in a village government school in Kambiriri village of Mukono District in Uganda, this was 1997 eleven years after Yoweri Museveni came in power. 

In January of 1986 when Yoweri Musevin took office in Uganda as president on the steps of the Ugandan Parliament, I was only a newborn of maybe three months old and my mother was seventeen.

Photo credit: Uganda History Archive!

There were many rebel groups in Uganda among the famous two were the LRA led by Joseph Kony currently and the NRA, the National Resistance Army, legend has it that the NRA began with twenty- seven men with just seven guns.Paul Kagame, current Rwanda’s president and Yoweri were two of the twenty-seven rebels that would form a militia backed by a political group put together by Ugandans in exile.

The NRM would fight the Ugandan Govt of that time until it was disfranchised. Of course the UPC Govt that was overthrown had many foes of its own, enough that the majority of Ugandans did not support it. In fact the UPC Govt sparked the rebellions that lead Yoweri to power over vote rigging.  

   

The NRA ruled Uganda for nine years and in 1995 they formed a constitution bringing back multi-party politics turning a rebel group National Resistance Army into a political party NRM, National Resistance Movement.  The NRM organized the 1996 election and won it across the country. The NRM as a party has won every election ever since.

As a Ugandan, from central Uganda, I dare not take away any credit from what the NRA did for Uganda. If I was from a different part of Uganda: I might just have another tale.

As a person that grew up on Hoima Rd in central Uganda. I experienced tremendous peace all on guard of the NRA. It was possible to tell that our nation was at war, my home town of Kasubi was a home of such NRA activities like road blocks, and it wasn’t strange to be surprised by an ambush of army men on the occasion all throughout my formative years in Kasubi.