Two Kenyan pro-democracy activists have reportedly been abducted in Uganda after participating in campaign activities for opposition leader Bobi Wine, raising alarms about increasing cross-border repression in East Africa.
Bob Njagi, chair of the group Free Kenya, and Nicholas Oyoo, its secretary general, were taken by heavily armed operatives at a fuel station near Kampala on Wednesday afternoon, according to eyewitness accounts. Both men had travelled from Nairobi earlier in the week to join Wine’s rallies in eastern Uganda.
Footage from a campaign event on Tuesday showed Njagi standing alongside Wine, whose National Unity Platform has emerged as the most prominent challenger to President Yoweri Museveni’s decades-long rule. Their public association with the opposition figure appears to have made them targets.
Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan lawyer and journalist critical of Museveni’s government, said the men were intercepted after leaving the campaign trail. “Security operatives, some uniformed and others in plain clothes, picked them up. Since then, their whereabouts remain unknown,” she said, calling the arrests part of a disturbing trend of transnational intimidation against activists.
This is not an isolated case. Atuhaire herself, alongside Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi, was detained and tortured in Tanzania while supporting an opposition candidate there. In another case last year, Ugandan opposition veteran Kizza Besigye and his aide were arrested in Kenya before being charged with treason in Kampala.
Observers argue these incidents reflect either a coordinated strategy among East Africa’s entrenched leaders to silence dissent, or a shared fear of cross-border solidarity among opposition movements—or both. “What we are seeing,” Atuhaire warned, “is authoritarian regimes cooperating to suffocate democratic voices, especially when they unite across national borders.”
Njagi’s abduction also follows a pattern: last year he was kidnapped in Nairobi by masked men and held incommunicado for over a month after campaigning for economic reforms and accountability in Kenya.
Bobi Wine, whose candidacy directly challenges Museveni in Uganda’s upcoming January election, condemned the latest detentions. “This rogue regime abducted them for nothing more than expressing solidarity with our cause,” he said on social media, demanding their unconditional release.
Ugandan police spokesperson Rusoke Kituuma did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and the government has remained silent. Museveni, now 81, has ruled Uganda since 1986, making him one of the world’s longest-serving leaders.
