Kampala: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni flagged off the distribution of 68,733 bicycles to all NRM village chairpersons across the country to be used in mobilising support for the ruling party in the 2021 general election. Without disclosing the amount of money spent on the purchase of the Roadmaster bicycles, Museveni said the procurement had been financed using three sources.
He said the money was raised from 20 per cent of his salary remitted monthly to the party treasury, remittances by NRM Members of Parliament (MP) and through fundraising by some undisclosed party members. “I want to thank those members who contributed money for these bicycles. There are 68,000 villages in the whole of Uganda and all of them will get bicycles. This has been long in plans,” the President said at the flagging off of the distribution exercise at NRM party headquarters in Kampala.
He added: “That should make mobilisation easy. Mobilisation based on the village is easy because you just ride or walk to the houses and talk to people. That is how we were mobilising in the bush.”
Although Museveni did not disclose how much NRM spent on the bicycles, a random search around Kampala revealed that on average a Roadmaster bicycle costs about Shs450,000. At this rate, the 68,733 bicycles would translate into Shs31 billion. Joseph Ndugwa, a local bicycle dealer in Katwe, said because of the rising demand during the Covid-19 lockdown, a new Roadmaster bicycle costs Shs600,000 while an old one costs about Shs350,000.
the President promised to also procure motorcycles and vehicles for all NRM sub-county and all district chairpersons. “In the same way, we are going to get motorcycles for the sub-country NRM chairpersons and later on we shall buy vehicles for the NRM district chairpersons,” Museveni said.
After receiving the bicycle from the President, the NRM chairperson for Lourdel Village in Kampala, Abdul Tebandeke, said he would need more facilitation to ably execute his mobilisation. “I am going to use this bicycle to spread the NRM ideology and mobilise support for the party in my village. However, this alone will not be enough for me to run my activities,” he said.
