By Sadique Bamwita
KAMPALA
The chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Justice Simon Mugenyi Byabakama has today February 10, 2025 announced the extension of the general update of the national voters register.
Justice Byabakama revealed that the extension of the general update of the national voters register is meant to give an opportunity to eligible voters to register, and also allow registered voters who wish to transfer to new polling stations to do so.
He said the extension will run from February 11, 2025 to February 17 , 2025 and that there would be no further extension. He also revealed that the update exercise is done in compliance with Article 61(1) of the Constitution of Uganda and section 20 of the Electoral Commission Act (Cap 176).
“More time has been requested to register more eligible voters. We decided to extend the exercise for a period of 7 days and after this there will be no further extension.
The Electoral commission chairperson disclosed that since commencement of the update exercise on January 20, 2025 at least 361,432 new voters have been registered while 292,021 applications for transfer have been made. He however emphasized that this excludes Learners who were registered by NIRA and whose data is still being processed.
Justice Byabakama added that by today the National voters register stands at 19.92 million voters slightly more than 18.1 million voters in the 2021 general elections.
He commended the local chairpersons for rallying Ugandans to participate in general update of the national voters register adding that he was delighted with the enthusiasm exhibited by Ugandans in embracing the ongoing update of the national voters register.
“We have engaged local leaders and Members of Parliament among other stakeholders and their feedback or the engagement has given us valuable information relevant for the ongoing exercise, “Justice Byabakama expressed pleasure.
Justice Byabakama noted that the update exercise has been hampered by limited number of registration kits from NIRA and breakdown of machines due to old age.
“The old machines greatly affected our pace or speed during the ongoing update and registration exercise. The machines were deployed on rotational basis but due to persistent breakdowns, the exercise went on slowly,” Justice Byabakama expressed displeasure.
‘We shall continue fixing the registration kits . Our technical team is on ground and hopefully the exercise will be successful. NIRA brought more 5000 registration kits but unfortunately they came late and we could not wait to align them with our exercise.’ He says.
Justice Byabakama dispelled allegations that the ruling party has taken over the update exercise.
“Before we undertake any electoral activities, we first inform political parties. Therefore, no political party has taken over our work,” he said.
He further clarified that the ongoing update of the national voters register is premised or based on parish level and that it’s only the display of voters register that will be based at the polling stations.
In his conclusion, he refuted allegations that biometric machines used in 2021 elections were faulty saying the problem was on part of half- baked operators saying some were not properly trained while others were panicky and ended up entering wrong codes hence slowing the voting exercise.
