Today in History: Uganda Holds Lost Counties Referendum, Returning Buyaga and Bugangaizi to Bunyoro

What the report says

On November 4, 1964, Uganda held the Lost Counties Referendum, allowing residents of Buyaga and Bugangaizi to decide whether the two disputed counties should remain under Buganda, return to Bunyoro, or become separate territories. According to Nile Post, voters chose overwhelmingly to rejoin Bunyoro, closing a long-running territorial dispute that dated to the colonial era.

The article explains that the conflict began in the 1890s, when British colonial forces allied with Buganda against Bunyoro and later transferred several counties to Buganda. Those changes were formalized in the 1900 Buganda Agreement, but Banyoro continued to press for the return of what they regarded as ancestral land. The referendum was built into Uganda’s independence settlement as a constitutional way to settle the issue.

Nile Post says the result was welcomed in Bunyoro as a restoration of territory, but it also had wider political consequences. It added to tensions between the Buganda Kingdom and Prime Minister Milton Obote’s government, at a time when relations between traditional kingdoms and the central state were already strained.

The returned counties later became part of Kibaale District, which was later subdivided into Kibaale, Kagadi and Kakumiro districts. In a broader historical context, the dispute is often seen as part of the chain of events that fed into the 1966 constitutional crisis and the weakening of Uganda’s traditional kingdoms.