OC Mustafa Mulalira in pursuit of the police mandate to protect and serve

Have you seen power in its rawer forms? Power buoyed by a gun and the intimidating fashion of army-green boots?

A man in a black T-shirt neatly tucked into army cargo pants and boots – the whole look bristles with ready energy. The man is in attack mode. Attacking a large poster of opposition presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi/Bobi Wine, leader of the National Unity Platform (NUP) political party.

He tears at it savagely and when two brave souls clad in NUP’s signature bright red overalls try to stop him, the man flexes his hard power. In broad daylight, like the main character in a low-budget action movie, he shoots at the feet of the two very unarmed NUP supporters, sending them scampering.

The man bounds back as he cocks his pistol, backed by three uniformed police officers (also armed, guns cocked) – a power pose that would do well on that action movie poster. But it is not a Ugawood action movie we are in, but a day in the life of a serving police officer of the Uganda Police Force whose motto reads, “Protect and Serve”.

The September 25 video of the police officer Mustafa Mulalira, attacking and ripping apart the NUP poster, gains traction on social media. In the languish of hoping and waiting for free and fair elections, netizens are enraged by the actions of the police, which continually cast the national police as partisan.

Fear not citizen bazzukulu. There is a method to the madness. The incident happened in Mbale. In the 60s and 70s, Mbale was the gleaming white pearl – the cleanest gem of a city in Uganda, second cleanest in East Africa according to UBC TV.

Today, Mbale’s clean reputation is no more as the district battles growing mounds of garbage and the ugliness that follows urban sprawl. District authorities, over the years, have taken up various initiatives to restore the clean gleam to Mbale, but the filth remains as intractable as a guerrilla war.

In March this year, Raphael Magyezi, the minister of Local Government, decried the state of Mbale: “Mbale was once a shining example of cleanliness and order. It is disheartening to see the current state of the city.”

Imagine a city, from grace to grass, grappling with growing piles of rubbish; now add the mania of the election season with the uncontrolled proliferation of campaign posters. As far as your eye can see, posters thrive unapologetically. Perhaps, Mulalira as the police officer in charge of operations at Mbale’s Central police station is a man after Mbale’s heart and this election season has him on edge?

What has driven him to the edge, you might ask? Is it the gross absence of constitutional and electoral reforms to ensure free and fair elections? Is it the continuing abductions and arrests of opposition supporters?

Perhaps, Mulalira’s heart burns with anguish when he remembers that opposition supporter Sam Mugumya, who recently returned from exile to contest for parliament, only to be disappeared by state agents?

Or is his head bursting with despair at the legal illegality happening in the continued detention of Kizza Besigye and Obeid Lutale? Or does the flagrant advantage of the incumbent president raining money and trinkets on associations all over the country disturb Mulalira’s thirst for fair play?

Indeed, the struggles are mounting. What if, saddled with the burden of picking a struggle as a serving police officer dedicated to protecting and serving Ugandans, he chose to keep Mbale clean? One has to start somewhere – preferably a modest and practical step like attacking ‘litter’.

From posters for fixing unrequited love to manhood enhancement, the indiscriminate plastering of posters all over our cities is a festering eyesore. What if Mulalira is a man with an eye for prettiness? Maybe that day, Mulalira was unusually burdened by the eyesore that the Mbale city has become, that the NUP poster at the NUP premises in Mbale city cast as under his decorum.

“How do posters enter this chat?” You ask innocently, you sweet muzzukulu. Ghanaian columnist Prince Kojo Asare, in a May 28 LinkedIn article titled, ‘The Poster Plague: How Ghana’s Public Spaces Are Being Defaced,’ argues, “…there are real environmental and economic consequences to this culture of indiscriminate poster placement. Torn posters and old banners often find their way into gutters, and during heavy rains, they contribute to choked drainage systems, which in turn lead to flooding. A flooded city is not just an inconvenience but a serious health hazard, as stagnant water becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other disease-carrying organisms.”

In an article, Dr Kwasi Addai, a Ghanaian urban planning expert, notes, “The way we manage our public spaces is a reflection of our national mindset. In countries where people take ownership of their cities, you see order and beauty. But in places where there is no accountability, public spaces become dumping grounds.”

Uganda Radio Network reported in March 2021 that Kampala residents, in the aftermath of the 2021 elections, resorted to removing election posters themselves, as Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) did not have the funding for poster removal.

Turns out in 2016, Parliament suspended the KCCA poster fees, describing them as illegal and unconstitutional. Dear reader, now do you see the bleeding hearts of police officers who attack NUP posters?

They are simply being accountable to their mandate – Protect and Serve! How could you not see their tayaad patriotism? So committed to ‘protecting and serving’ our cities – ensuring that Ugandans will behold beauty all around them in this election season.

Yes, dear reader, I hear you. Still, you seek to understand why the police attacks only NUP posters – how come other posters do not attract the premium vitriol of the police? Are NUP posters failing to meet the aesthetic standard of graphics design as regulated by the police?

If the police are indeed zealously guarding the beauty of Ugandan cities, why hasn’t it turned its serious guns on President Yoweri Museveni’s posters that are dotted all over our spanking new airport like high-end confetti?

It might be that the yellow of Museveni’s posters makes his ‘Protecting the Gains’ pop in a more alluring way that pleases the delicate eye of the police because yellow against our melanin is a certified winning look!

Fashion police, anyone? But what do we know about the protecting and serving impunity? Thus, we speculate as wildly as Mulalira and his fellow police officers attacking NUP posters.

This is Mustafa Mulalira, the OC operations, CPS Mbale city.
Our coordinators in Mbale made this poster, and took it to our Mbale city office.
Mulalira raided them and tore the poster, and his team fired live bullets at them.
Uganda Police, we’ve seen NRM supporters with huge… pic.twitter.com/nkLeBcSLAy

— Joel Ssenyonyi (@JoelSsenyonyi) September 25, 2025

[email protected]

The writer is a tayaad muzzukulu.