UGANDA: KOLOLO NATIONAL RESISTANCE MOVEMENT CONFERENCE A TOLD FROM TOMORROW

The Kololo 2025 delegate conference opened with flags, drums, and the familiar chorus of loyalty. The speeches promised wealth creation, ideological clarity, and the unstoppable strength of the movement, yet for the attentive ear, Kololo was not just another gathering of cadres. It was history repeating, not as copy but as echo.
“So, Kololo’s chaos wasn’t just disruption, it was the alarm belt, where Nakivobo chaos foretold authoritarian socialism, Kololo’s chaos foretold authoritarian capitalism. Two different masks on the same face exclusion.”

GULU CITY-WED. AUGUST 2, 2025
By OKUMU Livingstone Langol

In Gulu City, Northern Uganda, the Capital of the Greater North- on Saturday August 30th 2025 was yet another day, Radio Rupiny 95.7 FM hosted 11 talks shows guest to analyst NRM Kololo delegate conference, all talked candidly. The louder voce came from Senior Counsel Walter Okidi Ladwar who poured cold water on the recently concluded delegates conference equating it that this is a new chapter of Uganda history.
“The issues Acholi can identify of national to address our concerns, Uganda today after NRM Kololo delegate conference depict 1954 UPC delegate conference, 1966 Nakivobo, moves to the left common man chatter, the Moshi Conference and the difference the Busenyi 1980, Dr. Apollo Milton Obote return from exile Tanzania. The NRM 1986 socialist.
NRM itself is changing not by removing old guards, but its ideology with socialist, the new ideology from Kololo Delegate conference surprised Ugandans political pundit, we shall be for bad things.
Walter Okidi Ladwar argues that in the year after Kololo, Uganda’s story unfolding like a déjà vu scroll. The “common man Chatter” became background noise-Dr. Apollo Milton Obote’s socialist sermon, later Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s Capitalist hymn. Both were music to power, not to the village ear.
Acholi renounced Lawyer, Walter Okidi Ladwar who equated NRM lenient comments as the economy globalized and debt deepened, the rural farmer remained trapped between slogans and scarcity. As succession debates froze, the party grew older but not wiser. As ideology hardened into indoctrination, young Ugandans turned out, inventing their own politics in the streets and online.
Other political pundit school of thought placed the Uganda historical past wonder that historians will one day place Nakivobo 1966 and Kololo 2025 on facing pages, two grand conferences, and two ideological pivots. Both dressed as salvation, both leading to disillusionment. One promised socialism and delivered suspicion. The other promised capitalism and delivered inequality.
And the verdict written in hindsight will be sharp.
As the uproar was chanted in the Kololo 2025 delegate conference, Uganda’s tragedy was not the absence of ideology, but the betrayal of its leadership, from the Common Man’s Chatter to Ten-point Programmed, leaders named the poor, but never nourished them. At Kololo, as at Nakivobo, the common man was present only as a metaphor, not as master.
At gland, the 11 talk’s show of Radio Rupiny 95/7 FM, dub the Gulu Wii bye political talks show agreed one-at-a-time that the Kololo NRM delegate’s conference mirrored it, from UPC’s Nakivobo of 1966. Both invoked ideology, Dr. Apollo Milton Obote with Socialism (The move to the left) Museveni with market-patriotism. Both centralized power while sidelining the ordinary citizens. Ideology failing not because it was absent, but because it was used as theatre while the common remain betrayed

The chaos as a symptom of ideological failure marred Kololo 2025 NRM delegates conference, Hon. Simon Wokorach, the MP for Aswa County, in Gulu District, NRM MP reasoned that the just concluded NRM Kololo’s chaos was just mere noise, it was a symptom of a deeper fracture. The reason mirrored three phenomena. Wokorach says succession disputes, the cadres tired of waiting for the answers about tomorrow.
Secondly, there is generational rebellion, the majority of youths who have graduated from almost 40 Uganda Universities are demanding jobs, Kampala regime keeps on lecturing with patriotic favor Programmed like PDM job creation, Operation Wealth Creation Parish Development Model OPM.
Thirdly, to youth for them, they said no lectures in ideological schools, the delegates were no longer sure of NRM future as the ideological fatigue descended on them. Delegates are optimistic that NRM are no longer sure whether NRM was socialist, capitalist or simply survivalist.
“When President Museveni came in 1986, he paraded his master piece in doctrine, the Ten-Point Programmed, promising Ugandans clarity and direction.
Museveni’s failure in the NRM ideology manifested in a decades later, the Ten-Point Programmed once promised’ security, democracy, economic independence, anti-corruption. Kololo revealed that all four had failed.
Kololo delegates realized the security promised without dignity, stability maintained by fear of dissent, not trust of citizens, even democracy without choice, multiparty politics still remain hollowed out, leaving loyalty as the only viable ticket. While an economy without independence. This is saying that money is only in the hands of the first family, while foreign investors courted while peasants hustle on subsistence handouts.
The Kololo delegates believed the Ten-Point Programmed promised on the fight of corruption, the promise of collective leadership collapsed on anti-corruption vision, as succession was shelved under ideological training. Anti-corruption without consequence, scandals exposed, but patronage protected
Fancies Okello Mawa, one of the Acholi Spiritual Leaders of the view that Kololo are in the shadow Nakivobo narrative of 1966 UPC delegate conference too.
The Kololo Delegated Conference was meant to be a coronation of order, the flags waved, the anthem thundered, and the cameras rolled on a party showing its teeth. But behind the choreography, chaos leaked through the seams.

What happened next, the Delegates whispered pf successions, Youth wings classed with old cadres in corridors, some booed when names were read, others staged walkouts. Security ringed the grounds not only to keep intruders out, but to keep tempers in speeches drowned in applause one moment, mutters the next. Kololo became a house of thunder-the kind that warns of storms more than it delivers rain.
Ojok Dannis, 68 years old, from Odek Sub County who watches Kololo delegates conference through UBC TV blaring witnessed the mirror with 1966 Nakivobo unfolding as his discourse narrative, says the chaos was not new, although he was still a toddler in 1966. However, the report from his parents revealed that Kololo falls within Nakivubo. As reported in 1966, UPC’s Nakivobo conference erupted in its own storm. Dr. Apollo Milton Obote silenced dissent, purged rivals, and forced unity by decree. Out of that came the Common Man’s Man Chatter and the move to Left-a socialist banner masking authoritarian consolidation. The slogan promised poor relief, the practice delivered tighter, Ojok alluded.
Finally, at Kololo, chaos again birthed control. Where Dr. Apollo Milton Obote silenced opponents by force, President Museveni because of his advanced ages smiled tamed discontent by rhetoric, funds-another promised of wealth Creation. Another ideology class for the restless youth, another revolving scheme for the villages. Both conferences turned turmoil into justification for deeper centralization.
Walter Okidi Ladwar, a renounced Acholi Counsel that was not hollowed, when he predicted that Ugandans should not take Kololo Delegates Conference for a ride. He equated Kololo Delegates conference to 1964 UPC delegates conference, Nakivubo 1966, UPC delegates conference, the Moshi Uganda Exiles 1978, and summing it to Kololo 2025 NRM delegates conference that Museveni has said it all, warning Ugandans to watch the political transition very well.
Therefore, borrowing from the Common Man Chatter was loud at both gatherings, Dr. Apollo Milton Obote swore to empower him through socialism, Museveni promised to liberate him through market. In both cases, the common man left the conference unchanged-still poor, still watching convoys roar past.
When the dust settled, Kololo’s chaos was tamed in official reports, written off as “Vibrancy of democracy. But for Ugandans, it became the proof that ideology had failed, unity had cracked, and the future would not be negotiated in conferences, but in the ungoverned of hunger, youth frustration, and street discontent.
“So, Kololo’s chaos wasn’t just disruption, it was the alarm belt, where Nakivobo chaos foretold authoritarian socialism, Kololo’s chaos foretold authoritarian capitalism. Two different masks on the same face exclusion.””