Ugandan forces storm Bobi Wine’s home as election count under way

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Ugandan security forces have stormed the home of Bobi Wine, the lead challenger to the country’s president, as the count from Thursday’s election neared completion, according to the country’s main opposition party.

The National Unity Platform said that late on Friday evening “security operatives” cut electricity to Wine’s compound, assaulted his private security guards and broke into his house.

The NUP said that Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, was then “forcibly taken” by an army helicopter to an unknown destination.

There were conflicting reports about the former pop singer’s whereabouts on Saturday morning. Wine’s son Solomon said he had just received news that his father had escaped the raid.

“My father was able to escape, my mother is still currently under arrest, still nobody is allowed to enter the house,” he posted on X.

The police acknowledged there had been unrest in some parts of the capital Kampala, where the opposition has attracted a large following among younger voters, and said Wine’s house had been surrounded for his own protection.

The government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Wine on Friday claimed there had been widespread “ballot stuffing” in the elections, which took place amid a government-imposed internet blackout. He said leading members of his party together with polling agents had been detained or abducted across the country.

The NUP said 10 of its supporters were killed on Friday when security forces raided the house of an opposition leader south-west of the capital. Police said the deaths occurred when opposition supporters surrounded a police station.

Uganda’s octogenarian President Yoweri Museveni, who is seeking a seventh term in office, is leading Wine by 74 per cent to 23 per cent in the official vote tally.

Wine has described the results as “fake” and said “the people of Uganda will have the final say on this nonsense”.

Wine emerged as one of the most prominent opponents of Museveni’s rule after building a successful career writing songs decrying social and political injustice.

He and many of his lieutenants have spent lengthy stints under house arrest and in detention in recent years, and in 2018 Wine sought medical treatment in the US after being tortured.   

The alleged abuses in Thursday’s polls follow a pattern of broader erosion of civil liberties in east Africa, while uncertainty looms over how the ageing Ugandan president will manage a transition to new leadership.

Museveni became president in 1986 after waging a guerrilla war in the wake of 1980 elections which he claimed were rigged. He wrote after seizing power that the “problem of Africa in general, and Uganda in particular, is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power”.

He led the country through a sustained recovery from war and turmoil, becoming a key western ally in east Africa. In this year’s election he campaigned on a platform of stability under the slogan “protecting the gains”.

But Wine’s campaign for change has drawn huge crowds of Uganda’s rebellious and youthful population, more than three-quarters of which is under the age of 25.