Kampala, Uganda – August 9, 2025 – This week, social media was buzzing after The Explorer News published a story claiming that Ugandan opposition leader and musician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine, had bought a $1.5 million mansion in Canada using money from the National Unity Platform (NUP) fundraiser.
After looking closely at the story, Kelele UG can confirm that the claim is false and has no reliable evidence to back it up.
The first red flag was the price of the house. The property shown in the article is not worth $1.5 million at all. It is listed by Sotheby’s International Realty Canada for $8,895,000 — that’s over thirty-one billion Uganda shillings. This means that even if Bobi Wine used all the NUP fundraiser money, he still couldn’t afford the house. By July 2025, NUP had raised just over one billion shillings (about $279,789), and their final target is nine billion shillings (about $2.5 million). That is still far below the actual cost of the property.
This is not the first time similar rumours have been spread about Bobi Wine. In the past, false stories claimed he owned mansions in Boston and Tampa, Florida. Those stories were debunked by Africa Check, which found that the Boston home was a small townhouse and the Florida “mansion” was just a random property edited into a fake image.
In this latest case, a reverse image search showed that the picture used in The Explorer News article was taken directly from an online real estate listing. There is no proof linking Bobi Wine to the house. The article also relied on unnamed sources and quoted a so-called political analyst who criticised opposition politics. The writer, “Steve Mungereza,” has a history of publishing articles that attack Bobi Wine and the NUP but never criticise the ruling NRM. No professional or social media profiles for him could be found.
Right now, there is no credible public record or trustworthy document showing that Bobi Wine owns property in Canada. While he has travelled there before, there is no evidence he has bought any real estate in the country.
The bottom line is that the claim about Bobi Wine buying a $1.5 million mansion in Canada is false. It fits into a pattern of unverified political rumours designed to damage the image of opposition leaders in Uganda. As always, it’s important to check facts before believing or sharing such stories.
