Musaazi NAMITI
For someone who worked as a journalist for many years, Ibrahim Ssemujju’s absence on X was surprising.
But on June 1, it was a case of “Better late than never”. The former Kira Municipality MP joined the platform many celebrities, entrepreneurs, politicians find almost irresistible.
He gained 30,000-plus followers within hours of opening his account, and his very first post was a video he used to distance himself from parody accounts. One of those accounts had 86,000 followers.
“For some time, people have been opening social media accounts in my name. I even asked some to shut down those accounts, and they refused,” he said in the video.
“So I’m informing you officially that today [June 1, 2026] this is my X account where you can find me.”
He has since pinned the video, and it had notched up 2,500 shares and 1.2 million views at the time of writing this article.
The significant interest in Mr Ssemujju’s account quickly attracted comments from social media influencers.
“So Ssemujju joins X today, with only one tweet—announcing that he has joined, and he already has 17.9k followers!” posted philosophy teacher and cartoonist Jimmy Spire Ssentongo before that number jumped to tens of thousands of followers.
His timing is difficult to ignore. Mr Ssemujju had been an MP for 15 years and did not use X.
But after losing his seat in the January 15 election, a platform such as X offers him a way to broadcast his views directly to the public, just like Parliament did.
His arrival on the platform is likely to fuel speculation that he intends to remain politically active ahead of the next election cycle in 2031.
The former journalist does not follow anyone on X. But the speed with which he attracted followers suggests many people remain interested in what he has to say even though voters removed him from Parliament.
New to Ssemujju? Here’s why Ugandans care
Ibrahim Ssemujju was born 52 years ago in Masaka and attended his post-primary education at Masaka Secondary School.
A former journalist, he began his career at the Daily Monitor, which he joined after completing his first degree in Mass Communications at Makerere University in the late 1990s.
At the Daily Monitor, he worked as a reporter for many years. One of the major stories for which he is remembered was filed in 2003 and was about President Museveni allowing his daughter Natasha Kainembabazi to use his official plane to fly to Germany to give birth.
Mr Ssemujju quit Daily Monitor in 2004, along with one of the paper’s founders, Kevin Ogen Aliro, and other journalists to start the Observer newspaper, which started as the Weekly Observer. Mr Aliro was the paper’s managing editor.
He specialised in political coverage, reported on Parliament and later wrote a weekly column while serving as the paper’s political editor. That beat, it would seem, strengthened his interest in politics. In 2011, he quit journalism to join Parliament.
For most of his 15 years in Parliament, he was a member of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and worked as the party’s spokesman. Mr Ssemujju had joined a new party, the People’s Front for Freedom, when he lost his seat.
In Parliament, he was outspokenly critical of President Yoweri Museveni’s government over corruption and nepotism. Last year, while speaking on Capital FM’s current affairs show, Capital Gang, with Mr Museveni’s son-in-law, Odrek Rwabwogo as one of the panellists, Mr Ssemujju said: “This country is effectively under family rule. Wealth creation—Salim Saleh is in charge. Export—Rwabwogo. And I’m happy he is back here because he’s angry for no reason.”
Although Parliament has had several MPs with a journalism background—they include Bashir Kazibwe, Margaret Muhanga and Onyango Kakoba, Ssozi Kaddu Mukasa, among others—Mr Ssemujju has been arguably the most vocal, the most recognisable voice in the opposition.
Whether commenting on government spending, elections or corruption allegations, he rarely struggled to find an audience. He transcended the platform Parliament provided. and he has been a regular panellist on NBS TV’s show, the Barometer, while also appearing on CBS and Radio Ssimba’s Gasimbagane nebannamawulire (Face the Press)
His parliamentary career came to an end after he lost his seat in the January 2026 election.
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