President Yoweri Museveni has defended Stephen Nuwagaba, a young man whose access to State House and security officials has recently come under public scrutiny, saying the more urgent national concern is not Nuwagaba’s conduct but allegations that members of Uganda’s security services tortured, maimed and threatened him and his family.
In a lengthy written response directed at journalist Andrew Mwenda, Museveni said he came to know Nuwagaba after the young man sought protection as a fugitive and alleged victim of security personnel who wanted to silence him.
“Nuwagaba is a young man in his mid-twenties who came to me as a fugitive, a victim of torture and maiming, whom some elements in the Security Services were trying to silence, including threatening him with death,” Museveni wrote.
According to the president, Nuwagaba has spent months receiving treatment for physical injuries and trauma. Museveni said he arranged medical care in Uganda and abroad to save his life.
“He seems to have improved, but some of the maiming is still there,” he said.
Museveni’s intervention shifts attention from questions about Nuwagaba’s alleged influence around State House to a more troubling issue: whether security officers committed crimes against a civilian and then attempted to prevent information about those crimes from reaching the country’s leadership.
The president said some of the officers accused of torturing Nuwagaba are now facing charges in court. He also alleged that the same people attacked Nuwagaba’s mother, whom he described as an ardent supporter of the ruling National Resistance Movement, and sent threatening calls to his father, an LC1 chairperson, who was recently elected unopposed for another term.
“All this will be checked by the quiet investigation that I set in motion sometime ago,” Museveni said. He questioned why those accused appeared desperate to discredit Nuwagaba if the young man’s claims were false.
“Why the desperation, if the boy is a liar? Could it be a cover-up of crimes and treachery committed by these People the great Mwenda is now defending?” he asked.
A DISPUTE BIGGER THAN ONE YOUNG MAN
Museveni’s statement was framed as a response to Mwenda, whom he accused of creating a false national emergency around Nuwagaba.
The president portrayed the controversy as the latest clash between himself and a journalist who has previously challenged his judgement and questioned governmentbacked ventures.
“Having failed to destroy our promising pharmaceutical industry by calling our innovators (Matthias) Magoola and (David) Senfuka con-men, and declaring me senile, he has now discovered a new national emergency in Uganda. This is the young man known as Nuwagaba Stephen,” Museveni wrote.
He accused Mwenda of focusing on Nuwagaba’s alleged personal misconduct while ignoring the larger institutional failures that allowed torture, corruption and the obstruction of information to persist inside government.
Museveni acknowledged that Nuwagaba may have personal shortcomings, including allegations of taking money from people, pretending to hold influence he does not possess and telling lies about leaders. But he argued that even if those claims were true, they would not outweigh allegations of torture and corruption involving state officials.
“Even if they are true, they are not the main problem of the country,” he wrote.
That distinction matters for ordinary Ugandans. A private citizen who lies or misrepresents his influence may be investigated and held accountable under the law. But when officers with state power torture, threaten or conceal wrongdoing, the danger extends beyond one victim.
It raises questions about whether the institutions entrusted with protecting citizens can police themselves. Museveni described torture as immoral, unnecessary and contrary to the values of the armed struggle that brought the NRM to power.
“The terrible thing is that these alleged torturers and maimers belonged to our security forces. Is this what we and the People of Uganda fought for?” he asked.
THE HISTORY MUSEVENI INVOKES
To make his case, Museveni reached back into Uganda’s violent political history. He recalled members of the Front for National Salvation, or FRONASA, who were publicly executed during Idi Amin’s rule on February 11, 1973.
He named Obwona and Labeja in Gulu; Masaba and Namirundu in Mbale; Nkoko and Ntale in Jinja; mathematician Karuhaanga in Mbarara; Abwooli Malibo and Kasolo in Fort Portal; Karambuzi, Bitwaari and David Kangyire in Kabale; and another fighter in Kampala. Namirundu, he said, was only 17.
Museveni also referred to the skulls and skeletons left in the Luwero Triangle during the 1981–1986 war and recalled the killing of nine people at Kikandwa village on June 9, 1981. Among them, he said, were Lutamaguzzi, teacher Nkangyirwa and Ssentongo, a veteran of the King’s African Rifles.
At a personal level, Museveni named former colleagues Martin Mwesiga, Mwesigwa Black, Valerian Rwaheeru, Birihanze and Omongin among those who died during the struggle.
“All these People did not suffer so that Ugandans are tortured, maimed or traumatized, again,” he wrote.
That historical argument lies at the centre of Museveni’s response. The NRM has long justified its political authority through its role in ending state-sponsored killings, torture and instability.
Allegations that members of today’s security establishment are committing similar abuses therefore challenge not only the conduct of individual officers but the government’s founding moral claim. Museveni said that in 56 years of political and military struggle, he had never tortured or ordered anyone to torture an opponent.
“In the last 56 years I have been fighting, I have never tortured, or ordered anybody to torture, an opponent,” he wrote.
He acknowledged, however, that FRONASA and the National Resistance Army used what fighters called adhabu, or punishment, before formal trials. He distinguished these practices from torture, saying they were intended to inconvenience suspects or enforce discipline without beating or maiming them.
Museveni recalled an incident at Nyamiyaga Primary School in Tanzania in 1978 or 1979, where a peasant fighter called Bagarukayo challenged the leadership of Kumam cadres within FRONASA.
“I put him in andaaki prison, shirtless. The cold of one night was enough for Bagarukayo to become a good person. No beating, no maiming, but getting what we want: discipline,” he wrote.
He added that other forms of punishment included push-ups and carrying a rifle in a prescribed way. The distinction is legally and ethically significant. Uganda’s Constitution prohibits torture, while criminal justice requires suspects to be presumed innocent and punished only after due process.
Museveni’s description of pre-trial disciplinary punishment may therefore invite questions about where coercion ends, and unlawful treatment begins. Still, the president’s central argument was that torture, maiming and extrajudicial killings are morally wrong and strategically damaging.
“The UPDF and the other security forces, in fighting impunity, should not commit their own crimes, such as torture, extra-judicial killings, etc.,” he wrote.
WHY THE PRESIDENT SAYS TORTURE IS SELF-DEFEATING
Museveni also argued that violence against opponents can permanently divide society and deprive a country of people whose abilities it may later need. He cited the political conflict between Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in China.
Deng argued that it did not matter whether a cat was black or white as long as it caught mice, a metaphor for using either capitalist or socialist methods to modernise China. Mao disagreed with Deng’s approach but did not kill, torture or maim him, Museveni noted.
Deng was instead removed from power and placed under restrictions. After Mao’s death, he returned and led reforms that transformed China into a global power.
“What if the country needs the contribution of person X when he has already been killed or maimed?” Museveni asked.
The point was broader than the Nuwagaba controversy. For Museveni, a state that destroys opponents may win a temporary contest but weaken itself in the long term. Museveni argued that the country’s real problem is the presence of corrupt or compromised officers who prevent information about criminal conduct from reaching senior leaders.
“The reality on the ground is that the main problem of Uganda is not Nuwagaba seizing State House and the Security Forces, but the criminals, including some in the Security Forces and other organs, that have been blocking the flow of information about the criminals, covering them up, and ensuring information does not reach leaders like the President,” he wrote.
This is perhaps the most consequential admission in the statement. If accurate, it suggests that formal security and intelligence structures do not always provide the president with reliable information and that informal actors sometimes fill the gap.
Museveni said corruption complaints raised during the campaign included irregularities in the Parish Development Model in Maracha, Kapchorwa, Kween, Iganga, Buwambo and Kawempe. He also cited allegations that government jobs in local authorities were being sold and referred to corruption in road projects“How was Nuwagaba responsible for those?” he asked. He accused Mwenda’s investigative team of paying more attention to him and Nuwagaba than to corruption in government programmes.
“Why doesn’t the investigative team of Mr. Mwenda, that is always spying on Museveni, pick up the corruption in PDM, in the roads, etc., etc.?” he wrote.
WHY INFORMAL CHANNELS REACH STATE HOUSE
Museveni said informal sources become important when official institutions fail to act. “It is because the formal structures do not do their work that the informal come up to the President,” he wrote.
He referred to what he called the defusing of “Gen-Z riots” the previous year, saying informal actors reached one of his press officers, Karekye, who connected them to him through Natasha.
He also said people outside formal systems exposed individuals who allegedly demanded bribes from those seeking access to him. Museveni further referred to what he called a gang inside State House, allegedly led by a person named Itungo, which he accused of robbing a gold refinery developer identified as Cohen and planning to kill him. Those allegations, he said, were still being covered up by elements within state structures.
TORTURE IS BIG IN UGANDA
Nuwagaba’s allegations of torture are not isolated. For years, Uganda has faced repeated accusations of torture and other human rights violations, raising concerns both domestically and internationally about the conduct of security agencies and the protection of fundamental rights.
Last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, echoed those concerns, warning of what he described as the gradual erosion of the rule of law, the growing involvement of the military in civilian affairs, and a shrinking civic space in Uganda.
“Since the general elections on January 15, 2026, at least 50 opposition leaders and supporters, five human rights defenders, and five journalists have been subjected to human rights violations,” the statement posted on the UN’s website said.
“These include instances of enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, and arbitrary arrest.”
Similar concerns were raised earlier this year by the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) in its annual report on the state of human rights and freedoms. The Commission reported an increase in complaints related to unlawful detention by security agencies.
According to the report, “52 per cent of the cases filed at the tribunal relate to violations of the right to personal liberty, with 133 complaints seeking redress over detention beyond the constitutionally required 48-hour limit by the security forces.”