FALSE: This video is not of Ugandan journalist arrested for questioning President Museveni on healthcare issues
This post on X (formerly Twitter) with a video claiming to show a Ugandan journalist who was arrested for questioning President Yoweri Museveni about the poor state of hospitals is FALSE.
Similar claims were shared here and here.
The claim was shared after Galaxy TV journalist David Mwesigwa asked Museveni about the poor state of hospitals in Mukono and Kayunga districts shortly after being nominated as a presidential candidate ahead of the 2026 general elections.
The journalist’s questions drew reactions from government officials, including Prime Minister Nabbanja and Health Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr Diana Atwine.
However, the individual who appears in handcuffs in the video under analysis is not Mwesigwa.
A Google reverse image search on a screenshot from the video led to a video posted on TikTok on 19 September 2025, days before Mwesigwa asked Museveni questions during the press conference.
In the longer version of the video, where the individual is later seen in a courtroom, authorities identified the suspect as Nicholas Kiiza, a casual worker, who was arrested for the alleged murder of his wife on 18 August 2025.
PesaCheck contacted the Metropolitan Police spokesperson, Patrick Onyango, and the journalist, and both confirmed no arrest had been made.
“I have also seen the video, but it’s not true that I was arrested. I am at work,” Mwesigwa responded to PesaCheck’s inquiry by telephone.
PesaCheck looked into an X post with a video claiming to show a Ugandan journalist who was arrested for questioning President Yoweri Museveni about the poor state of hospitals in Mukono and found it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Flavia Nassaka and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck chief copy editor, Stephen Ndegwa.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.