By Our Reporter
KAMPALA — Early Sunday, armed personnel surrounded Nation Media Group’s Kampala sites, forcing NTV Uganda and Spark TV off the air after troops executed a shutdown order attributed to Chief of Defence Forces Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
The stations went dark at about 5:00 a.m. local time after a security operation that began just after midnight at NMG’s Namuwongo compound and at the Kampala Serena Hotel. Viewers encountered blank screens indicating “video unavailable,” and the status of the Daily Monitor — also singled out in Gen. Muhoozi’s warnings — was unclear. Staff inside reported being prevented from entering or leaving the premises during the operation.
The action followed a string of posts on X in which Gen. Muhoozi announced the closures, saying NTV Uganda and the Daily Monitor would be shut down and asserting that they would not reopen without his approval. In his posts he criticized the idea of an unfettered press and said the media should be aligned with revolutionary cadres.
NMG’s Ugandan assets include the two-decade-old NTV Uganda, the Daily Monitor, The East African, Spark TV, radio stations 93.3 KFM and 90.4 Dembe FM, the Ennyanda paper and the Nation Courier. NTV was still rebroadcasting an Al Jazeera feed until about 4:45 a.m. before losing transmission, and the two radio stations also reportedly went off air during the operation.
By morning, security forces remained deployed at both locations, and employees were still unable to leave. As of publication, neither the Uganda People’s Defence Forces, the Uganda Police Force nor the Uganda Communications Commission had issued statements detailing the legal basis for the shutdown, and NMG Uganda had not released an official response.
State actions against NMG are not unprecedented: police raided the Daily Monitor and Dembe FM in 2013 over a leaked letter and closed NTV Uganda briefly in 2007 amid criticism of its coverage. The company has long branded itself “Uganda’s Bold Voice,” and past interventions have drawn condemnation from press freedom advocates. The duration of the current blackout remains unknown.