National Unity Platform (NUP) Secretary General David Rubongoya has revealed that the party is ready to nominate the Party Principal Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine for Presidency on Tuesday after collecting signatures from 18 districts as directed by the Electoral Commission.
While addressing journalists at the Makerere –Kavule party Headquarters on Saturday, Rubongoya said they had managed to collect over 18,000 signatures per the Electoral Commissions Friday directive.
“Initially when the President was inviting people, he was inviting people who are already in Kampala and neighboring places but we have been getting people who traveled all the way from Gulu, Arua to come and endorse the change that we are seeking as Ugandans, so we are very happy that people have come” he said.
Rubongoya further noted that the party coordinators across the country were collecting signatures to ensure that Bobi Wine is nominated next week.
“Our teams in different parts of the country are also collecting signatures and many of them have already sent them in so we are 100 percent ready for nomination, as you can see the numbers are overwhelming, people are still coming from everywhere, some are even traveling in buses” he said.
He further challenged the electoral commission to publicly display the two million signatures that NRM collected for President Museveni.
“According to the report which we saw, these people claimed that Gen Museveni submitted more than enough signatures, that he had signatures from 136 districts. It’s shameful to see that they were telling us that they had more than 2 million signatures, they also didn’t fulfill all the districts but most importantly we would like to look at that list” he said.
Rubongoya added, “We would want the people of Uganda to see, who those people were that signed because am sure they are lying that they had two million signatures like they did in the last election where they claimed that they had five million signatures but media did an investigative story and found that many of those files were even empty”.
Rubongoya challenged the EC to produce a comprehensive report explaining why they rejected NUP signatures from 50 out of the 130 districts submitted, while approving those of Mr. Museveni.
On Friday evening, NUP members went up in arms after the Electoral Commission declared Robert Kyagulanyi’s nomination signatures insufficient for the 2026 presidential race.
According to the Electoral Commission, only 80 districts signatures submitted by NUP were verified, leaving 18 districts unverified, a shortfall that could disqualify him from the nomination process unless new signatures were submitted.
In response, Bobi Wine took to his X account and criticized the commission for having accepted President Museveni’s signatures without issue and further called on party members from the 18 districts to go to party headquarters on Saturday to sign the nomination forms.
“If you are a registered voter and your National Identity Card shows you are a voter in any of the following districts, please come to the National Unity Platform headquarters at Makerere-Kavule tomorrow between 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. and give us your signature,” he urged supporters.
According to the Electoral Commission, aspiring presidential candidates are required to submit at least 10 signatures from each of 98 districts across the country.
In relation to the NUP’s verification of signatures tale, the Gen Mugisha Muntu led Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) on Saturday expressed disappointment with the Electoral Commission over it’s verification process.
“While we acknowledge that the verification stage is part of the nomination process, we strongly disagree with the late communication from EC (only 3 days left). We call upon our supporters to support this process until its logical conclusion-nomination of our candidate” a statement on the party’s X handle read.
