NRM youth league members threaten to campaign for opposition

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT |  The National Resistance Movement – NRM Youth League members have vowed to shift their efforts and support opposition Presidential candidates if they are not granted autonomous mandate and resources for campaigns. 

The national youth league executives re-iterated their demand in a press release today in which they said they are not being cared about in the 2021 general election campaigns and yet they form three-quarters of the voters. 

“Please Your excellency Sir, let your campaign be youth led, minus that don’t be surprised of an event that can occur and it will be shameful for the first of its kind in Uganda,” reads the press statement. 

Twaib Achile, the chairperson NRM national Youth league said the fact that youth votes have increased from 7 million in 2016 to 11 million now calls for special attention from fellow youth leaders not from the elderly persons. 

Twaib told Uganda Radio Network in an interview today that youth leaders have tasked President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni who is also the NRM presidential candidate to consider granting them an independent status lest they shift goal posts to other candidates in the opposition.   

But in his address to the youth leaders in West Nile at Muni University, President Museveni rejected a memo presented to him to have the youth run an independent campaign team for the president and NRM candidates. He rejected the proposal saying the youth should mobilize votes under the NRM women and elders’ council, which are already well structured in the 2021 NRM campaign strategy guidelines. 

The President’s response however angered the youth leaders in West Nile who had hoped he would endorse their idea. This is the second time the youths are insisting on running an independent-youth led campaign team for NRM presidential and other candidates ahead of the 2021 general elections.

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