Release Bob Njagi, Nicholas Oyoo and all detainees in Uganda

Photo Courtesy: Citizen television

Kenyan citizens Nicholas Oyoo and Bob Njagi were abducted in broad daylight by uniformed officers in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. Since then, they have simply vanished. Uganda’s police and military deny involvement, and the Kenyan government has gone silent. Are we witnessing a return to Idi Amin’s terror or does the 1986 NRM promise of justice and human rights have any legs left three months before the January 2026 general elections?

For the 325 million East Africans born after 1986, President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement came to power branding a powerful human rights promise. His 19 January 1986 inaugural speech committed to establishing a democratic government, not as a favour but as a right of the people. Government must serve, not master over the people. The proclamation was transformatory at the time.

Under the previous regimes of General Idi Amin Dada (1971-1979), Milton Obote (1980-1985) and General Tito Okello led junta (1985-1986), Ugandans experienced one of the most brutal dictatorships in African history. Documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Uganda Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights and several other Uganda human rights organisations, millions suffered some of the worst human rights abuses.

By the time the international community had isolated the Amin regime and Pan Africanist Julius Kambarage Nyerere sent Tanzanian troops to topple the dictatorship in 1978, 100,000 to 500,000 human beings had been murdered by the state. Ugandans were tortured, suffocated, beaten, disappeared and shot en masse. They included political opponents, ethnic minorities like the Acholi and Langi, businesspeople, journalists, judges, civil servants and religious leaders like Archbishop Janani Luwum. Over 70,000 Asian Ugandan citizens including US Democratic nominee for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s family were also expelled and their properties handed over to loyalists.

Tragically, Amin’s exile brought no respite. Largely seen as fraudulent, the 1980 elections that returned Obote to power tragically opened another chapter of state harassment, detention and killings. Obote turned the Luwero Triangle into a killing field and then, one mass grave. Security agencies profiled, detained and tortured opponents without charges. Violating international human rights law, civilians were held in mass interment camps or forcibly to flee to survive.

Rather than rebuild the rule of law and judicial institutions, military tribunals replaced civilian courts and security agencies silenced critics with impunity. While the 1986 Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights report has never been made public, this history remains painfully vivid for the National Resistance Movement leadership and elderly Ugandans. Against the backdrop of this violent history and the 1986 promise of reform, the continued use of state violence and enforced disappearances to silence unarmed critics is not just baffling, it is a betrayal of the covenant to break with past tyrannies.

Today marks 25 days since Bob and Nick vanished off Kampala’s busy streets in broad daylight. This Wednesday, a Ugandan court dismissed a habeas corpus application for the two. Both the UDF affidavit and the court judgement is deeply unsatisfactory. It fails to satisfy their families, and a growing number of campaigners now in full gear across the world demanding their safe return and justice. One of the initiatives calls on people across the world to email President Yoweri Museveni using the amnestykenya website. Another seeks to remind the Kenyan government of its constitutional obligation to use any means necessary to have the two released.

As campaigns intensify across Kenya, Uganda, and internationally, each day lost by both government signals complicity, deepens impunity, erodes the East African Community and degrades their political and moral credibility.

While the two governments consider their options and do what is in their power, every moment deepens the families' pain, public anxiety and the injustice. Every moment we do not speak up also, increases the risk. It is time the Ugandan authorities immediately ensure the safety, well-being, release, and return to their families of Bob Njagi, Nicholas Oyoo, Sam Mugumya as well as all Uganda detainees.

This opinion was also published in the Saturday Standard, 25 October 2025.