Kampala Woman MP Nabilah Naggayi Sempala is National Unity Platform (NUP) flag bearer for the city mayoral seat currently occupied by Erias Lukwago of the FDC.
Naggayi says Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the main opposition party, fights women’s political careers.
On September 28, NUP Election Management Committee Chairperson Mercy Walukamba announced Naggayi as the party’s flag bearer for the 2021 Kampala Mayoral race.
Walukamba said her committee had “done our part and now forwarded her name to the executive to advise on the way forward.”
“We are doing this because we don’t want another scenario where the member pulls out like last time.”
THE GENESIS
The party had picked Naggayi’s brother-in-law Latif Ssebagala, the Kawempe North MP, as its flag bearer.
NUP had rejected singer Joseph Mayanja aka Jose Chameleone.
Chameleone protested, arguing that Ssebagala had pulled out of the race on September 18.
“Please recall that by close of September 18, your record indicates that I was unopposed by the fact that my fellow competitor All-Hajj Latif Ssebagala had withdrawn his candidature in a letter already in your possession and in the public domain,” Chameleone wrote to the Mercy Walukamba Election Management Committee on September 20.
“By the foregoing, I am the unopposed NUP candidate for the position of Lord Mayor Kampala city.”
With Ssebagala out and Chameleone refusing the flag, the party’s Election Management Committee, announced a fresh nomination exercise for the position.
On September 25, Naggayi and Kuruda Ssali filled and returned expression of interest forms.
NABILAH NAGGAYI SEMPALA: FDC ARE WOMEN BEATERS
And on September 28, Walukamba declared Naggayi the NUP candidate.
Recalling her failure to secure the FDC flag for the Kampala mayoral race, Naggayi accused the Najjanankumbi-based party of failing women.
“FDC are women beaters. I am not the only lady who left. Where is the former leader of the opposition [Winnie Kiiza]? I am glad that I have got a party that respects me as a woman,” she said.
SSEMUJJU: NUP SHOULD BE CAREFUL WITH NABILAH NAGGAYI
FDC has warned NUP against Naggayi.
“We wish honorable Nabilah all the best but if she keeps playing politics the way she has been doing in FDC, then I want to feel sorry for NUP,” said party spokesperson Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda.
“If Nabilah changes the way she plays politics, she can be a very good politician. But if she doesn’t, NUP should be careful.”
