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BY RICHARD DRASIMAKU
ARUA CITY: THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2025
Tom Amagu, Returning Officer for the National Resistance Movement NRM) in Arua City, said that three people have nominated for the Arua Central Division mayoral race while Ayivu Division still has one candidate.
The contestants for the Central Division are the former mayor, Charles Asiki, Saidy Baguma and Alege Wahab.
But in the Ayivu Division, the incumbent mayor Marlon Avutia is still on the lookout waiting for any challengers to show-up.
The nominations will close on June 30, 2025 to be followed by two weeks of joint campaigns by the candidates.
Following his nomination, Asiki in particular appealed to the people to be ready for the unfolding campaigns.
“Unlike my opponents who staged pompous show at the NRM office for their nomination, I chose a low key approach and went quietly because we have a Lugbara saying that lough when you are returning from war not when you are still going,” he said.
Asiki said he is seeking a return to “Make Arua Great Again” because as an experienced leader he had led the municipality for 10 solid years propelling it into a city but most of the things he set up have fallen apart since his departure.
From health and hygiene, road infrastructure, schools etc where I left Arua as one of the three best small cities in Africa but that status has been lost.
At the time Charles Asiki became the Mayor in 2006, the then Arua Municipality was a cholera endemic and filthy urban center.
Mountains of garbage became permanent features of the town’s landscape, wooden kiosks littered the urban center without corresponding latrines that the people littered it with excrement thrown in polythene bags under the cover of the darkness of the night.
It was a low point by health standards but Asiki moved on to steer the municipality for ten years. He introduced several programs such as the October annual beautification week, and routine testing of water quality in the taps, boreholes, and ablution containers for Ecoli that introduced a semblance of hygiene leaving it primed for renaming as a regional city.
In fact the April 2015 recognition of Arua as the second best small city in Africa by the United Cities and local governments’ alliance was the icing on the cake for a decade of distinguished as well as transformative leadership.
“We had a program in partnership with the slum dwellers federation, we build a one stop youth center for skills training, but the only thing taking place at that place is kickboxing and aerobics,” he said regrettably.
“Stop experimenting with people when there is an experienced person with proven track record,” declared Asiki.
