Ujasusi Blog’s East Africa Monitoring Team | 22 October 2025 | 0145 BST
🧭 The Allegation: What Was Said and When
On the eve of Tanzania’s most contentious elections in years, an unexpected claim surfaced from an unlikely source: Kakwenza Rukira Bashaija, a Ugandan author and vocal government critic who has repeatedly faced detention and alleged torture under President Yoweri Museveni’s rule, posted on social media that soldiers from Uganda’s People’s Defence Force (UPDF) had crossed Lake Victoria into Tanzanian territory on the night of October 20–21, 2025.
According to Rukira, these troops were sent at the behest of President Yoweri Museveni to help Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan suppress planned demonstrations scheduled to coincide with the nation’s October 29 general elections. The alleged UPDF contingent, Rukira claimed, was led by Lt. Col. Nsaju.
The narrative Rukira presented was stark: Samia no longer trusted her own military, the Tanzania People’s Defence Force (TPDF), to crush civilian dissent. So Museveni, a long-standing authoritarian ally, allegedly dispatched trained troops to do the job.
But here’s the critical point: No official confirmation exists. Neither Tanzania nor Uganda has acknowledged any such incursion. No journalist has independently verified troops crossing the lake. No eyewitness accounts have emerged from communities on either shore. The allegation exists solely in Rukira’s tweet.