By Praise Aloikin Opoloje
By the morning of 16 January 2026, eighteen hours had passed since Ugandans cast their votes, and the National Tally Centre at Lweza–Lubowa on Kampala’s southern fringe had acquired an air of suspended waiting. The numbers were coming in-this this was where Uganda’s democratic promise would be made or broken.
Justice Simon Byabakama, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, stood at a lectern and read the results aloud to an audience of diplomats, domestic and international observers, party agents, journalists, and civil society representatives who had gathered in a place that was, technically, the most transparent location in the country at that moment.
But, the numbers lacked geography: which polling stations had reported, which districts were complete? Which of the 50,739 stations across Uganda’s 146 districts had yet to transmit? Nobody seemed able to say.
Figures accumulated on screens in cumulative totals, implying a journey from village to sub-county to district to the national centre without showing it. Anthony Asiimwe, Uganda Law Society Vice President, gave voice to what many in the room were thinking when he told NTV Uganda: “As an observer, I must say I’m not getting what I expected to have seen. For me it’s a bit disappointing from the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission to come and just read for people figures.” He added something that cut to the heart of the problem: “We don’t know where the figures are coming from, we don’t know what they represent, from where. There’s no detail that you can attach to the result he’s giving us.”
Asiimwe was stating a procedural fact. The lack of detail, compounded by a five day nationwide internet blackout, meant the only narrative available was the government’s.
How the Process is Supposed to Work
Uganda’s electoral architecture is designed around a verifiable paper trail. After ballots are counted, presiding officers at each polling station fill in Declaration of Results forms and announce outcomes publicly. These forms together with all other ballot materials travel to sub-county headquarters, then to district tally centres, where returning officers compile results before forwarding totals to the national tally centre for final declaration. Party agents have the right to be present and to receive copies of the declaration forms at each stage.
Justice Byabakama had signaled before election day that he understood this. At a press briefing on January 12, 2026, he laid out the timeline: results would flow from district tally centres to Lubowa, where they would be compiled before the presidential winner was announced within 48 hours of the close of polls. He also specified that results envelopes could only be opened at district or city tally centres, not at sub-county level. “The procedure is aimed at safeguarding the integrity, transparency, and credibility of the electoral process,” he said. åBut on January 16, aggregate totals arrived at Lubowa without this architecture being visible.
The Election Results Visualization System, a digital platform projected on large screens, showed colour-coded maps of which candidates led in which districts. But, Benjamin Katana, National Treasurer of the National Unity Platform, rejected the figures saying they differed from dec;sration forms held by party agents. “The results being shown at the National Tally Centre were just cooked, they don’t reflect the outcome of the voting exercise.” The EC did not produce the declaration forms for public inspection.
Asiimwe warned this was not a procedural nicety: “That alone is a legal issue. Because candidates are likely to contest these results. And when they do, one of the things they will ask is: where are the declaration forms?”
The Shutdown that Changed Everything
To understand why the opacity at Lubowa mattered, you have to go back to 6:02 PM on January 13, 2026, when the internet in Uganda went dark. The Uganda Communications Commission’s directive, (ECO/436, 13 January 2026) ordered all licensed Mobile Network Operators and Internet Service Providers to suspend public internet access, SIM card sales, and data roaming services. The directive further required blocking of all public internet traffic, including social media, web browsing, video streaming, personal email, and messaging applications. The Commission had, until days before, assured the public no shutdown would happen.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights described the directive with precision in its statement of January 16, 2026: it blocked “public internet access, the sale and registration of new SIM cards, and outbound data roaming services to One Network Area countries.” The AU-COMESA-IGAD Election Observer Mission, led by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, noted in its preliminary statement that the UCC “had assured observers that internet services would remain available throughout the electoral period,” and that this assurance had been contradicted in full. The East African Community’s observer mission, whose 58 observers had been deployed across all five regions, reported that the shutdown “disrupted observation activities and limited public access to information during a critical phase of the electoral process.”
The EAC Mission head, Ambassador Edda Mukabagwiza, addressed reporters directly on the operational consequences: “The Uganda Communications Commission issued a directive to suspend public internet access which had a direct impact on the compilation and analysis of field reports from our observers.” Observer missions that are unable to compile and analyse field reports in real time cannot provide what observer missions exist to provide. Uganda’s 2026 election observation record was, by design, incomplete.
The observation record of Uganda’s 2026 election was, by design, incomplete.
What Disappeared When the Internet went Dark
The shutdown lasted five days. Partial restoration began on January 18, but social media and messaging platforms remained restricted for an additional eight days. Full restoration did not occur until January 26, eleven days after polling. This timeline is important because it means that the period during which results were being announced, disputed, and received by the international community was a period in which ordinary Ugandans had no independent means of verifying, contesting, or amplifying what they were being told.
Consider what this meant in practice. Citizen observers couldn’t photograph Declaration of Results forms and share them. Civil society organisations whose entire monitoring methodology depended on digital coordination lost their primary channel. Journalists couldn’t file and upload reports.
Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform, which like most opposition operations in Uganda had relied heavily on digital communication because traditional broadcast space is tightly regulated and largely state-aligned, couldn’t circulate its own account of the vote. The NUP’s party agents who were at polling stations couldn’t tell anyone what those forms said.
“We were reporting blind,” one journalist told Unwanted Witness researchers afterward. At polling stations, observers couldn’t transmit updates. Without connectivity, without real-time documentation, there was no independent means to transmit, or verify information.
The Narrative that Filled the Silence
Into the information vacuum, one data source was broadcast without interruption. The National Tally Centre required all media stations to broadcast their data in real time via state television and radio. Most media stations like UBC, NBS, and NTV Uganda, operating under EC-accredited licences, were at the tally centre.
Byabakama was releasing updates at scheduled intervals, 9:30am, 2pm, and again the following morning, creating a rhythm of official disclosure that structured how the count was experienced by those watching. The first set of results, released late on January 15 showed Museveni leading with 0.26% of 133 polling stations reporting. By 9:30am on 16 January, he had 71% with results from 22,758 stations representing 44.85% of stations reporting.By the sixth session of results, the proportion had reached 93.61 percent of stations, and his share had barely moved.
By 4pm on 17 January, Byabakama declared Museveni president with 7,946,772 votes (71.65%). “And with votes cast in his favour exceeding 50 percent of the valid votes, the commission hereby declares the elected President: Tibuhaburwa Kaguta Museveni.” The total: Robert Kyagulanyi had 2,741,238, or 24.72 percent.
Museveni’s margin was striking in itself. In 2021, he had won with 59 percent. A jump of nearly 13 percentage points in five years, in an election conducted under more restrictive conditions than its predecessor. The main opposition candidate’s home which was under military siege from the moment polls closed, invited scrutiny that the tally process was not designed to satisfy. The EC refused to comment on videos that circulated, through the limited channels still operating, alleging ballot box stuffing. Wikipedia’s summary of the election noted that “no tally was published further amplifying concerns of fraud.”
When the opposition challenged the difference between EC figures and the declaration forms their agents held, the EC’s answer was to reiterate that the process had been lawful. Robert Kyagulanyi’s response to the results was made from hiding. Police had raided his home in Magere on the night of January 16. He had escaped. His wife and other family members remained under what he described as house arrest. He posted on X, one of the few platforms some Ugandans were still accessing through VPNs, before authorities tightened restrictions further.
In a video message, he said he knew they were looking for him but he had a message for Ugandans. ‘We reject whatever is being declared by Mr Simon Byabakama because those so-called results that they are declaring are fake and they don’t in any way reflect what happened at the polling stations.”
All such claims could not be verified during the voting process. Social media, through which documentation typically travels, was dark. By January 18, when partial internet restoration began, the news cycle had moved on. The window for real-time accountability had closed.
The Normalisation of Electoral Darkness
Uganda’s conducted internet shutdowns in 2016, 2021, and 2026 elections. In 2021, the blackout lasted 100 hours. The 2026 shutdown was longer and more sophisticated.
Unwanted Witness described the pattern in its February 2026 report, No Signal, No Voice: “What was once exceptional is becoming normalised. Elections in digital darkness risk becoming routine governance practice. That is the democratic alarm bell.”
The US Senate called the 2026 election “a hollow exercise.” Human Rights Watch said it was “marred by human rights abuses.” Amnesty International described the campaign period as “a brutal campaign of repression.” The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights issued a press release calling for immediate internet restoration and the reinstatement of civil society permits. All of these statements were issued after the result had been declared, the winner had been congratulated by regional heads of state, and the machinery of a seventh Museveni term was already in motion.
Ugandan voters who supported Museveni have reasons to believe he won legitimately. He has real support, and the result, while large, is not arithmetically impossible given his incumbency advantages. But opacity matters because a transparent count in a genuinely contested election protects the winner and loser. It is the documentation that makes a result defensible. By conducting the count in conditions where documentation was structurally impaired, the EC did not only prevent scrutiny of the outcome but also proof of the outcome.Byabakama, urging calm at the declaration ceremony, said: “We are not here to hide anything.” But the internet was off, declaration forms weren’t published, seven civil society organisations were suspended, and the opposition candidate was in hiding. Observers couldn’t compile reports, and people couldn’t trace the numbers.
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