The stakes in the 92nd Makerere University Guild Presidential race just got significantly higher.
Hours before polling opens tomorrow morning, the President of the National Unity Platform and Member of Parliament for Kyadondo East, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu — better known as Bobi Wine — has publicly endorsed Gracious Kadondi for the Makerere University Guild Presidency.
The endorsement, posted on his social media platforms on the eve of the election, is the most high-profile political backing in the guild race so far — and it transforms what was already Uganda’s most watched campus election into something with unmistakably national dimensions.
Bobi Wine’s message was personal, warm, and direct.
“That girl @kadondigracious from Mulimira zone in Kamwokya and also went to Kitante Hill School; I don’t know whether to call her home girl, or OG, or comrade. Anyway, I hope the Makerere University students can see what we all see. Come tomorrow, please vote KADONDI graciously,” he wrote.
The post pulls no punches. Bobi Wine is not merely expressing support for a candidate — he is invoking shared geography, shared roots, and shared identity. Kadondi is from Mulimira zone in Kamwokya — Bobi Wine’s own backyard, the community that has been central to his political story. She attended Kitante Hill School. She is, in his framing, one of their own.
Bobi Wine is not a peripheral figure in Ugandan public life. He is the leader of the country’s principal opposition party, a globally recognised activist, and one of the most influential voices among Uganda’s youth and urban population — precisely the demographic that makes up the bulk of Makerere University’s student body.
His decision to personally endorse Kadondi — by name, with personal context, the night before voting opens — is a deliberate and calculated intervention. It signals to every NUP-aligned student at Makerere, and to every young person who has followed Bobi Wine’s political journey, exactly who they should be voting for tomorrow.
It also raises the profile of the race far beyond the university gates. A Makerere guild election endorsed by the leader of Uganda’s main opposition party is no longer just a campus story. It is a national one. This endorsement does not arrive in a vacuum. The 92nd guild campaign season has been among the most turbulent in recent Makerere history — a debate halted after clashes between supporters, a venue standoff that made national news, King Saha publicly backing Kadondi after his Street Jam performance was cancelled and blaming a “corrupt system fighting the opposition,” and now, on the eve of the vote, Uganda’s most prominent opposition leader adding his voice to the same campaign.
The pattern is consistent and unmistakable. The Kadondi campaign has been framed — by its candidate, by its supporters, and now by Bobi Wine himself — not merely as a bid for student leadership but as a contest between an establishment that resists change and a movement that demands it.
Whether Makerere’s student body accepts that framing will be determined tomorrow.
