President Yoweri Museveni has taken an early lead in Uganda’s presidential election as vote tallying continues across the country, according to provisional results released by the Ugandan Electoral Commission on Friday morning.
The early figures show Museveni, the candidate of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), with 61.7 per cent of the vote, ahead of his closest challenger, National Unity Platform (NUP) leader Bobi Wine, who has garnered 33.4 per cent.
The provisional results are based on returns from the first 133 polling stations, offering an initial snapshot of the contest as counting proceeds in other parts of the country.
The figures remain subject to change as more results are received and verified from polling centres nationwide.
Museveni’s early lead mirrors past election patterns in which the long-serving president has performed strongly.
The election is a high-stakes rematch between 43-year-old opposition leader Bobi Wine (Kyagulanyi Ssentamu) and 81-year-old incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, who has held power for four decades. Six other candidates are also contesting.
Uganda’s election process came under sharp focus on Thursday after President Yoweri Museveni himself was affected by biometric verification failures that disrupted voting across the country.
At his polling station, electronic voter identification machines failed to recognise Museveni’s fingerprints, briefly preventing him from casting his ballot and mirroring challenges reported by many voters nationwide.
“I put my right fingerprints on the machines, but it didn’t work. The machine did not accept it. I put my left fingerprints, but it did not accept it,” Museveni told journalists after the incident.
“It could be they took them in a different angle. But my face was scanned and accepted by the machine,” he said.
The malfunction amplified concerns over the reliability of Uganda’s biometric voting systems, which experienced widespread delays and technical glitches, prompting authorities in several polling stations to revert to manual voting.
Museveni said the failure of the system raised questions that would need to be investigated.
“So, I don’t know if this was an oversight or part of the manipulation. But we shall study all the other factors. We are following it. We will find out why,” he said.
Election officials were forced to resort to facial recognition technology to verify the president’s identity, allowing him to vote.
Security forces have been accused of using violence to suppress opposition supporters.
Military spokesperson Col Chris Magezi rejected these claims, insisting that security deployment was to deter violence.
