Police have blocked the establishment of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party offices in Kitgum Municipality in Northern Uganda.
This comes a few days after the party had acquired office space in the Pandwong Division to help coordinate its political activities in East Acholi ahead of the 2021 general elections.
Kitgum district police commander, Tommy Eyaku on Sunday directed the People Power activists in the district to suspend all work prior to the opening of the new office branch. The activists had already hired workers to start painting the office space and put up the national and party flags.
Eyaku says NUP had not officially notified the district security committee about their intention to open an office in the district, therefore, pushing the police to justly stop all works on the matter.
According to Eyaku, the office can be opened after the district security committee has received official notice of the Party’s intention. Tony Oanya Olenge the People Power coordinator for the Acholi sub-region and Samuel Obedigiu, the Regional Youth Coordinator for the northern region who were over-seeing the office activities were interrogated for nearly two hours at Kitgum Central police station.
Olenge said that police have no legal authority to block the opening of the offices of any political party in the country.
He also revealed that the same security personnel have also gone ahead to intimidate their landlord to revoke the tenancy agreement for the time period paid for. He called the security to exercise fairness to all political parties as the 2021 political race are underway. NUP is headed by Presidential aspirant Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi. He is also head of the People Power political pressure group.
