Kahinda Otafiire
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Kahinda Otafiire has asked Ugandans to stop complaining about losing employment opportunities to refugees and foreigners, saying that the non-Ugandans are simply capitalizing on the opportunities Ugandans have ignored.
He made the remarks while appearing before the Defence and Internal Affairs Committee on 1st April 2026, during the consideration of the 2026/27 Ministerial Policy Statement for the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) after MPs sought clarification on the alien registration.
However, Theodore Ssekikubo (Lwemiyaga County) disagreed with Minister Otaffire asking Government to control the number of refugees coming into Uganda.
He said refugees are encroaching on employment and business opportunities of Ugandans, thus marginalizing them.
Otafiire defended his stance arguing that letting refugees work reduces pressure on taxpayers whose revenue would be used to fund the stay of refugees in the country.
During the meeting, Rosemary Kisembo, Executive Director, National Identification and Registrations Authority (NIRA) provided an update on the recently concluded mass enrolment exercise, where she revealed that although NIRA had set out 17.2 million new registrations and 15.8 million renewals, 90 percent renewals, and close to 50 percent of the new registrations were achieved.
She said the Authority is stuck with 9 million unpicked national IDs.
This prompted Mukono North’s Abdallah Kiwanuka to ask NIRA to explain the criteria being used to enable Ugandans pick their national IDs, given that some people haven’t received messages detailing the status of their IDs.
Brandon Kintu (Kagoma North) called on NIRA to improve the distribution of the IDs, detailing his ordeal where he went to pick his national ID at Wandegeya in Kampala, only to be informed his ID is in Gulu.
Ssekikubo revealed that he opted to renew his ID in Lwemiyaga in Ssenbabule district because he didn’t want to congest Kampala, but up to now, he isn’t aware of the status of his ID.
Kisembo attributed the congestion at the NIRA distribution points on the low staffing levels, arguing that despite having 12million national IDs to distribute, NIRA only employs 418 staff and of these, 210 staff are in Registration and Operations, thus giving a ratio of 1:100,000 people and to make matters worse, the money for the project ended in February 2026.
Kisembo also informed the Committee of plans to resend the message alerts again, saying the current system in place doesn’t give NIRA the opportunity to establish if the messages have been sent or not.
