Joyce Bagala’s political future within the National Unity Platform (NUP) appears to be in freefall after her latest entanglement in a fraud scandal exposed by Leader of the Opposition Joel Ssenyonyi.
The Mityana Woman MP, who rode the 2021 NUP wave to unseat a powerful cabinet minister, now finds herself increasingly alienated from the party that once championed her rise.
Bagala is genial and her infectious smile would rub on anyone in proximity but politics is unforgiving. Tender or brittle the animal in this game trudges on you without second thoughts.
On Wednesday, Ssenyonyi publicly accused Bagala and four other MPs of fraudulently using his name to obtain an invitation to a two-week workshop in Kenya next month.
He said the group forwarded a letter to the Speaker requesting facilitation, with the letter bizarrely listing him as the delegation leader—despite him having no knowledge of the trip.
“They didn’t inform or consult me… so they impersonated me,” Ssenyonyi wrote in a strongly worded statement he labelled a “fraud alert.”
He added that one MP even lobbied to be included on the list by handwriting their name onto the document after it was issued.
The revelation has intensified questions around Bagala’s loyalty to the party and its leadership.
Earlier this week, NUP deputy president for Buganda region, Muwanga Kivumbi, named her among the so-called “rebel MPs” the party is considering replacing with new candidates ahead of the next election cycle.
Her strained relationship with the NUP leadership traces back to the party’s bruising fallout with former Leader of the Opposition Mathias Mpuuga, a close personal ally of Bagala.
When NUP moved to censure Mpuuga over his controversial Shs500 million “service award,”
Bagala declined to sign the motion.
She further defied party directives by attending Mpuuga’s Thanksgiving event in Masaka last year—a move interpreted as open insubordination.
Bagala has insisted that her relationship with Mpuuga is grounded in long-standing personal trust, not political scheming. But that loyalty has cost her.
Her absence from NUP's internal mobilisation activities and her repeated public alignment with dissenting voices has turned her into a political liability for the party’s top brass.
Her current woes come in stark contrast to her 2021 triumph, when she swept to Parliament on the back of the NUP tidal wave in Buganda.
Defeating Lands Minister and former police spokesperson Judith Nabakooba, Bagala symbolised the generational shift that the Bobi Wine-led party represented in central Uganda.
But the same party machinery that delivered her to victory now appears poised to disown her.
Without the NUP ticket, Bagala’s prospects in Mityana look shaky.
The party remains dominant in the region, and defying its authority could be politically suicidal.
Yet her actions suggest she is increasingly willing to go it alone, perhaps betting on personal popularity or external alliances to weather the storm.
With this week’s fraud scandal piling onto her already strained relations with NUP, Joyce Bagala’s parliamentary career hangs in the balance.
If the party follows through with its threat to field a new candidate in Mityana, she could be the first high-profile casualty of NUP’s bid to reassert internal discipline—and a cautionary tale for those who stray too far from the party line.