Najja Ssenyonjo said the pop star-turned-politician was believed to have been shot and was currently receiving treatment at Nsambya Hospital in the capital, Kampala.

He said the incident had occurred while Bobi Wine was on his way to visit his lawyers in Bulindo, which is about 20km (12 miles) north of the city.

A statement from the police said officers on site reported that the opposition leader had stumbled while getting into his vehicle.

An investigation would be conducted to clarify the facts, the statement added.

The X account of Bobi Wine, leader of the National Unity Platform (NUP), whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, first broke the news, saying: “@HEBobiwine has been shot in the leg by police in Bulindo.”

Footage has been shared on social media by journalist Solomon Serwanjja, who was at the scene, showing the 42-year-old opposition leader being helped from a building with a bleeding injury from his left shin.

“We only heard bullet sounds in the scuffle so it’s doctors to confirm but as of now it’s believed to be a bullet,” Mr Ssenyonjo told the BBC.

The police say Bobi Wine had attended an event at Bulindo and afterwards “he and his team moved out of their cars and embarked on a procession up to Bulindo town.

“However, the police advised against it. Despite their guidance, he insisted on proceeding… closing the road, leading to police intervention to prevent the procession.

“During the ensuing altercation, it is alleged that he sustained injuries,” the statement said.

Bobi Wine was first elected to parliament in 2017, and ran against President Yoweri Museveni in the 2021 election, which was marred by state repression.

He is popular among young people and has been arrested – and beaten up – numerous times.

The country’s security forces have a long history of pursuing political opponents of President Museveni, who has been in power for almost 40 years.

Source: BBC

The singer-turned-politician is the strongest challenger to President Yoweri Museveni, who has held office for almost 40 years.

The 41-year-old has been arrested numerous times and has faced several charges, including treason.

Police denied arresting Bobi Wine, saying he was merely “escorted” home.

“Disregard rumours of his arrest by propagandists,” the police said in a statement.

Bobi Wine, a former pop star whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, made a failed bid for the presidency in 2021 in a tense election against President Museveni, 79.

The election campaign was marked by a crackdown on the opposition and at least 54 people were killed during anti-government demonstrations.

Bobi Wine arrived on Thursday, via the Rwandan capital, Kigali, following a series of international engagements.

His supporters had planned to welcome him at Entebbe International Airport and accompany him to his home about 50 km (30 miles) away in a huge march, but the police said this was illegal.

Bobi Wine said that as soon as he landed, even before he had gone through immigration, “goons grabbed me and dragged me, twisted my hands and bundled me into a waiting private car”.

He later said from his home that he was under house arrest.

A video posted by his National Unity Platform (NUP) on X, formerly Twitter, showed the leader being led away after disembarking from a plane in Entebbe. One of his associates was heard on the video saying “Where are you taking him?”

“The cowardly regime has arrested our president upon arrival at Entebbe Airport. We set out to receive him today, but the panicky regime security could not even allow him into immigration,” said Mathias Mpuuga, the NUP leader in parliament.

Police later fired tear gas to prevent a group of his supporters from reaching his home.

Bobi Wine’s return was eagerly anticipated by members of his party, who view him as a symbol of change for young people in a country ruled for decades by one man.

Last month, police announced they were banning NUP rallies across the country because of public order issues.

Ugandan soldiers and other security forces had been deployed on roads leading to Entebbe airport since early on Thursday morning, as well as outside the NUP offices, and in Kampala’s central business district.

Police spokesman Patrick Onyango said security agents had accompanied Bobi Wine to his residence in Magere, Kasangati.

Ugandan authorities have a long history of using so-called “preventative arrest” to detain opposition leaders, often holding them for several hours before returning them to their homes so as to stymie mass demonstrations.

Elections are more than two years away.

But Bobi Wine has already begun campaigning and wants another go at unseating Mr Museveni.

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Bobi Wine, who is also a pop star singer, has said police and military officers, deployed overnight, had barred him from leaving his home in the country’s capital.

“The military has increased deployment around my home. No one is allowed to leave or enter,” he wrote on Twitter.

He also accused President Yoweri Museveni of placing him “under house arrest”.

Bobi Wine, who topped the list of the most searched foreign personalities on Google in Kenya in 2021, was set to campaign for an opposition candidate in the central district of Kayunga where Museveni is also expected to hold a rally.

Bobi Wine contested against Museveni in the country’s general elections in January, coming home a distant second.

He filed a case in court challenging the results but withdrew it soon after, claiming harassment and a lack of fairness.

Following the January vote, which was marked by a crackdown on opposition figures, soldiers and police surrounded Wine’s property, stopping members of his household including his wife from leaving.

Museveni has ruled Uganda without pause since seizing control in 1986 when he helped to end years of tyranny under Idi Amin and Milton Obote.

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Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, alleges that the judges at the Supreme Court are biased.

He asked the court to overturn the results on multiple grounds, including fraud and the widespread use of violence.

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The musician turned politician says that he will now take the matter to the court of public opinion, using non-violent means.

President Yoweri Museveni won a sixth term in office at the poll, with 59% of the vote.

More than 50 people were killed in violence ahead of the election.

Museveni has ruled the country for five consecutive terms.

He has historically been able to manipulate elections in his favour, because he controls Uganda’s military, judiciary, and Electoral Commission with an iron fist.

Throughout this electoral campaign, however, the long-standing Ugandan president has been upstaged by a formidable young challenger: popular musician-turned-parliamentarian Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine.

Since being elected as a Member of Parliament in 2017, the 38-year-old leader of the National Unity Platform has become the new face of Uganda’s opposition.

There are four things worth knowing about Bobi Wine and Uganda’s politics.

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Building a movement, defying expectations

Bobi Wine has repeatedly been underestimated by government supporters and critics since he first ran for parliament.

He was forced to run as an independent after the two major opposition parties, the Forum for Democratic Change and the Democratic Party, turned him away.

He nevertheless easily won the by-election in the Kyandondo East constituency within Kampala with 78% of the vote.

Since then, he has proved himself to be a skilled politician who has successfully built a strong political movement – from scratch.

Within his first two years in office, he forged a reputation as a principled and fearless opponent of Museveni’s policies.

He was a leading voice against the president’s ultimately successful effort to remove presidential age limits from the constitution.

He also led protests against the government’s proposed tax on social media in July 2018.

Over the course of that same year, he endorsed opposition candidates who went on to win four consecutive parliamentary by-elections.

By 2018, he had created a political pressure group called People Power, Our Power. When the government blocked its registration as a formal political party, Bobi Wine outmanoeuvred the Electoral Commission by aligning himself with a smaller, pre-existing one, which he re-christened as the National Unity Platform.

Almost immediately more than 20 MPs left more established opposition parties to join his party.

A target of unprecedented state repression

Bobi Wine has been a regular target of state repression.

The Museveni regime responded to his early successes by repeatedly blocking him from holding concerts and banning the public from wearing People Power’s trademark red berets.

Since being elected, Bobi Wine has been arrested countless times. He has never been convicted on any of the charges.

Some of his movement’s members and supporters have been killed, sometimes in suspicious circumstances.

Many have been arrested. Perhaps most notoriously, in August 2018, as he campaigned for a fellow independent candidate in a by-election in Arua in northwestern Uganda, Bobi Wine and at least 35 of his political associates were arrested following dubious reports that Museveni’s motorcade had been stoned.

That same night the opposition leader’s driver, Yasin Kawuma, was murdered with a bullet that Bobi Wine believes was intended for him.

In the aftermath of these arrests, the Kyadondo East MP was charged with treason and possession of illegal firearms.

Over his next ten days in custody, he was beaten so brutally by government security forces that he could not stand, sit or walk.

He eventually sought treatment for his injuries in the US.

International outrage at this incident has not stopped the Museveni regime from escalating its tactics of repression during this election cycle.

The arrests have continued unabated throughout the current campaign.

In addition, campaign rallies have been restricted and the government has met opposition supporters with deadly force on multiple occasions.

Most tragically, following Bobi Wine’s arrest in mid-November, nationwide protests erupted during which state security forces killed at least 54 people.

In response to these abuses, in early January, Bobi Wine and two other co-claimants filed a 47-page complaint to the International Criminal Court against Museveni and nine of his regime’s security officials, accusing them of gross human rights violations dating back to 2018.

Generational dimension

Uganda’s changing demographics have a great deal to do with Bobi Wine’s electoral appeal.

The East African country of 46.5 million people has one of the world’s youngest populations, with a median age of 16.7.

Just over one in five Ugandans are between the ages of 15 and 24 and 77% of the country’s population is under the age of 30.

Although these young people have benefited from reforms to public education introduced by the Museveni regime, they see little hope for the future.

By some estimates, youth unemployment in Uganda is as high as 70%. Frustrated young people can, therefore, easily identify with Bobi Wine, who grew up in the Kampala ghetto of Kamwokya.

Like him, they have only known life under Museveni. He was not even four when Museveni first came to power in 1986.

Bobi Wine has skilfully appealed to this demographic. He frames his political movement in generational terms: the “Facebook generation”, which he represents against the “entrenched interests of the ‘Facelift generation’” of the Museveni regime.

He has been able to speak to – and articulate – the deep sense of anger and grievance that young Ugandans feel towards the Museveni regime.

In so doing, Uganda’s “Ghetto President” has come to be the face and voice of young people’s collective desire for generational political change.

Populism

In the final weeks of the campaign, Museveni derided Bobi Wine as a populist politician. While this adjective was intended to dismiss his young adversary, there is some truth to this label.

In my research, I argue that Bobi Wine’s inclusionary brand of populism has also been a key to his political success.

His use of populist rhetoric has effectively forged a new collective sense of identity among his mostly youthful supporters around the nodal point of “the people” and in antagonistic opposition to the country’s political elite .

But Bobi Wine’s brand of populism is novel because his conception of “the people” is defined not in ethno-nationalist terms (as with right-wing politicians in the US or Western Europe).

Rather it’s defined largely in generational ones. This has helped him to build a burgeoning political coalition across ethno-regional lines.

If Bobi Wine’s brand of generational populism proves successful, its repercussions could be felt across Africa. It could serve as a model for opposition politicians who are operating in countries with similar demographic characteristics and facing many of the same political obstacles.

“Despite the widespread fraud and violence experienced across the country earlier today, the picture still looks good. Thank you Uganda for turning up and voting in record numbers,” Wine tweeted shortly after midnight (21:00 GMT), managing to bypass the blockage.

The 38-year-old former pop star-turned-legislator did not give details about his accusations, which contradicted the government’s account that Thursday’s vote had been peaceful with no extensive cases of violence reported.

The Electoral Commission is expected to release the results within 48 hours.

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The internet remained down for a third day as vote counting continued in the country. Results are expected by Saturday afternoon.

President Museveni is seeking a sixth term in office and Wine has been arrested multiple times during the campaigning, is his main competitor among 11 opposition candidates.

The election took place after one of the most violent campaigns in years, with harassment and arrests of the opposition leaders, attacks on the media and dozens of deaths.

The run-up to polling day was marred by a sustained crackdown on Museveni’s rivals and government critics and unprecedented attacks on the nation’s media and human rights defenders.

In November, at least 54 people were shot dead by security forces loyal to Museveni during protests against one of Wine’s numerous arrests.

The US, EU, UN and global rights and democracy groups have raised concerns about the integrity and transparency of the election.

Meanwhile, the African Union (AU), has sent monitors, along with an AU women’s group.

On Wednesday, the United States, a key aid donor to Uganda, announced it was cancelling a diplomatic observer mission after several of its staff were denied permission to monitor the election.

On Tuesday, Museveni announced the suspension of social media networks and messaging services like Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp in response to Facebook closing accounts linked to government officials that the technology giant said were spreading misinformation.

A 38-year-old singer is challenging Yoweri Museveni, 76, in one of the world’s youngest countries.

Robert Kyagulanyi, known by his stage name Bobi Wine, says he represents the country’s younger generation, while Mr Museveni says he is standing for stability.

Dozens of people have been killed in the run-up to the election.

What is the latest?

Polls were due to open at 07:00 local time (04:00 GMT) but voting was delayed in several areas.

Some polling stations did not open for close to two hours and voters in the queue had grown angry and had started shouting at the polling gate officials, the BBC’s Patience Atuhaire reports from the capital, Kampala.

She said the cause of the delay was not clear.

Reuters news agency reports that, at the six polling stations where their reporters observed delays, the ballot papers had not arrived.

Polls are due to close at 16:00 local time (13:00 GMT) but will remain open until everyone in the queue at the time of closing has voted, our correspondent adds.

Results are not expected before Saturday.

How will results be transmitted without the internet?

Coronavirus guidelines on social distancing and handwashing are proving hard to implement but here in Kibuli, which sits in the shadow of downtown Kampala, everyone queuing up is wearing facemasks.

There are reports that a new biometric system to verify people’s identities is not working in some areas. The electoral commission’s spokesperson would not confirm whether this was because the internet has been cut off.

There are questions about how results from around the country will be transmitted to the national tally centre in Kampala without the internet. The electoral commission told the BBC it has systems in place to do this but didn’t explain further.

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What security measures have been put in place?

Ugandan police promised they would deploy officers on rooftops of the capital Kampala on polling day, which they say comes after opposition activists commanded protests from rooftops in November, when more than 50 people were killed after Bobi Wine was arrested.

Earlier this week, Mr Museveni gave a stark warning.

“If you try to disturb peace, you will have yourself to blame. The security forces, following the law, are ready to deal with any troublemaker,” he said in a televised speech wearing military fatigues.

How bad was the violence during the campaign?

Violence has been at an unprecedented level.

Security forces cracked down on gatherings ahead of the election and dozens have been killed.

The government says the ban on gatherings was to prevent the spread of coronavirus while the opposition say it was a smokescreen for repression.

Bobi Wine and others out of the 10 opposition candidates have been arrested on several occasions.

Will the vote be free and fair?

It depends who you ask.

The government has previously said the election would be free and fair.

But the US cast doubt over the electoral process and withdrew its election observers after most of its accreditation requests were denied.

In response, Mr Museveni’s spokesman Don Wanyama tweeted that there were observers from the African Union and East African Community.

“I don’t remember when Uganda last sent election observers to the US,” he added.

Bobi Wine has called on voters to remain at polling stations on Thursday and use their mobile phone cameras to record the tallying process in an effort to prevent vote rigging.

Who is Yoweri Museveni?

Mr Museveni is standing for a sixth elected term in office, as leader of the National Resistance Movement (NRM).

He came to power on the back of an armed uprising in 1986 and has long been depicted to Ugandans as a liberator and peace bringer.

But he has managed to maintain his grip on power through a mixture of encouraging a personality cult, employing patronage, compromising independent institutions and sidelining opponents, says the BBC’s Patience Atuhaire.

Who is Bobi Wine?

Bobi Wine is widely thought to be the strongest of the 10 opposition candidates in the presidential race.

The 38-year-old reggae star is known by his supporters as the ghetto president.

His party, the National Unity Platform (NUP) party campaigns for basic needs like improving access to healthcare, education, clean water and justice.

Over the last two decades Bobi Wine’s musical output has been filled with songs about these issues and they have inspired a fervent following.

He grew up in Kampala’s Kamwokya slum where he went on to build his now world-famous recording studio.