Uganda Land Commission – The Investigator News https://theinvestigatornews.com More than Just News Tue, 29 Mar 2022 22:05:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://theinvestigatornews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/cropped-ms-icon-310x310-32x32.png Uganda Land Commission – The Investigator News https://theinvestigatornews.com 32 32 Kololo SS Files: Shame as Kampala affairs Minister Callously Back Sudhir to Grab the Public Land https://theinvestigatornews.com/2022/03/kololo-ss-files-shame-as-kampala-affairs-minister-callously-back-sudhir-to-grab-the-public-land/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kololo-ss-files-shame-as-kampala-affairs-minister-callously-back-sudhir-to-grab-the-public-land Tue, 29 Mar 2022 22:05:37 +0000 https://theinvestigatornews.com/?p=2848 Kampala affairs Minister, Kabuye Kyofatogabye is backing city entrepreneur, Sudhir Ruparelia to construct an alleged ultra-modern sports facility along Naguru’s Lugogo bypass.

Kyofatogabye backs his stance with fears that if Sudhir isn’t supported to erect the stadia, land grabbers would end up converting the 6-acre chunk of land which he seeks to use for the purpose. Tragedy is that Sudhir himself grabbed the land Kyofatogabye backs him to construct the recreation facility on.

We don’t know if the minister is privy, or not, as to how Sudhir acquired the public land, he is talking about in the first place. For that matter, we can’t conclusively tell if the minister is blowing Sudhir’s trumpet out of pure ignorance, or, if he is backing the shrewd businessman for other considerations.

Well, for the sake of those who don’t know, this land originally belonged to Kololo Senior Secondary School (Kololo SS). Kololo is a public school, or to put it simply, a Universal Secondary School (USE).

For all the duration of time Kololo SS was owning this land, it wasn’t lying just there idle. Far from it. The school used to hold a sports facility owned wholly by it, for recreation purposes.

The land in question

For the largest part of this time, Kololo SS was a renowned sports powerhouse. This is the time when Uganda’s sports luminaries such as Fred Musisi Kiyingi, a veteran sports analyst formerly writing for Soccer World and presently for The Monitor, came through the then rich soccer system.

Kiyingi was spotted by Uganda’s legendary Cranes player as well as coach, David Otti who swiftly enrolled him at Coffee FC where he was a regular net buster. Kiyingi would later switch to KCC FC where he continued to net vital goals both locally and at the regional level.

The other Kololo SS legend is Jackson Mayanja. Mayanja played so beautifully during his glory days that his Arab employers in El- Masry nicknamed him Mia Mia (100 percent perfect).

The last one, for lack of space and time, is Robert Aloro. Aloro first turned out for Coffee FC before Express grabbed him, thanks to his exceptional dribbling skills as well as sharp eye for the net.

This is not to suggest that there were no other sports disciplines that were being developed at Kololo SS worth writing home about, but for lack of space and time, the ones above will suffice.

We must also add that the stadia were profitably serving communities in the vicinity, such as Nakawa, Naguru, Bukoto, Ntinda, Kololo name it, who weren’t necessarily students of Kololo SS.

We have lined all this in order to show that Kololo SS had put the stadia to optimum use for many years by the time Sudhir plotted to grab it. Following Sudhir’s acquisition of the said lease under shoddy circumstances, Kololo SS sports` fortunes changed for the worse.

As we speak, the USE school is renting the stadia owned by the neighboring City High School for their sports activities. This is clearly so frustrating and regrettable for a public school that used to own a stadia of her own not many years ago, plus lots of land for expansion and upgrade of the sports facilities.

In any case, the government aided school had found a private partner known as Admark to upgrade and expand the recreation facility. So, it cannot be said by anybody that Kololo was sticking on an archaic facility with no plan to expand and upgrade it which is given as the reason why Sudhir came in.

But as fate would have it, upon learning of the expansion plan in the pipeline, Sudhir went behind Kololo SS’ back and leased the land for and on behalf of Kampala Parents School (KPS).

Ubuntu No More: The shrewd Sudhir

This is how the sly businessman ended up nipping in the bud, the other arrangement KSS had entered into with Admark. Not that the public private partnership (PPP) arrangement had collapsed on its own.

Other private investors such as Nanjing Hotel and Kensington would join in the scramble and partition of Kololo SS’ land until the whole parcel of land was thus finally extinguished.

The biggest tragedy is that Sudhir himself is an old boy of Kololo SS. An OB doesn’t steal from the former school. Right? Unless, of course, that OB is Sudhir! Well, addressing himself to the matter, Sudhir leaves one with the feeling that what he did was perfectly right.

He gives the impression that there were people who were dying to grab the land in question. And as an OB, he offers this as the justification for taking over the land. Let`s pose some questions; 

“Why didn’t Sudhir report the land grabbers to the authorities?”  After all, he claims he knew them. Again: “Why did Sudhir alter the land ownership to KPS yet he wanted to preserve it for Kololo SS? To be continued… 

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Interesting Twists to IGG Betty Kamya and Uganda Land Commission Boss Byenkya Beef https://theinvestigatornews.com/2022/01/interesting-twists-to-igg-betty-kamya-and-uganda-land-commission-boss-byenkya-beef/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=interesting-twists-to-igg-betty-kamya-and-uganda-land-commission-boss-byenkya-beef Thu, 27 Jan 2022 14:01:42 +0000 https://theinvestigatornews.com/?p=2549 Beatrice Nyakaisiki Byenkya, the Secretary to the Uganda Land Commission (ULC), is at the moment a subject of graft criminal prosecution.

She ended up in the dock after having purportedly barred graft investigators attached to the IGG from accessing her office. The detectives had paid the visit to retrieve what they claim was evidence linking Byenkya to corruption. 

We hope you might be knowing that story by now. Betty Olive Namisango Kamya Turomwe, the IGG, filed these charges against Byenkya. This is how the powerful woman at ULC ended up arraigned before the Kololo-based anti-graft court.

The presently out-on-bail Byenkya faces the music with three cops offering guard duties at her office who she is assumed to have instructed to keep at bay Kamya’s agents. That was but the preamble. 

We now beg to present as well as discuss another interesting angle to this story which the media had by now conceivably overlooked. We are going to do this by posing the question: Did Kamya use a flawed process to pursue a just cause? We shall answer the question in affirmative and then give our reasons for holding so. Here we go.

First and foremost, and with candid respect, we are of the considered view that the good IGG erred in turning up at the office of Byenkya in the style and fashion she chose to. 

We hold so because we feel the agents of the IGG required to obtain a search warrant (SW) from the courts of law prior to turning up at the offices of Byenkya let alone going in to search for whatever they wanted to retrieve. 

That is the lawful and ideal procedure under the legal and ideal environment to follow in pursuing matters the IGG was pursuing. We feel and now courteously submit that since the agents of Madam Kamya had turned up at ULC minus a SW from a competent court of law prior to doing so, Madam Byenkya was justified in turning them away. 

Not only were the visitors unsanctioned, but were also unwanted. One would even describe them as gate-crashers or trespassers if he or she were to choose so. 

We contend that ULC which is naturally one of the sensitive offices in the motherland by the fact that therein is stored highly valuable documents, cannot be accessed and searched at one’s whim. 

This is why we strongly think one seeking to gain access to sensitive info at ULC would need to seek for court permission or at least have the courtesy of informing the people in charge prior to doing so other than storming the place in a Ki-nigeria-like fashion as if they were walking into an abandoned dwelling in an equally deserted land.

One acting as the agents of Kamya chose to in this matter would run the risk of being treated as playing to the gallery (read attention seekers) no matter what he or she could be pursuing a justifiable cause in the first place.

A case can be made that the investigators had identified themselves to the people at ULC as agents of the IGG and what had taken them to the offices. Well, Uganda is gifted with biological characters who have and continue to impersonate people they are factually not including falsely posing as special aides complete with documentation of the First Son himself!

That said and done, a person in the shoes Byenkya is in is naturally and legally bound to take great care as not to welcome as well as offer entry to any stranger simply because he or she happens to turn up at her offices claiming to be working for this and that office. 

Yes Kamya is the IGG. She is also obliged to fight graft. But that doesn’t give her the leverage to do as she wishes or to be highhanded. She must act according to the laws of the land lest her cases would end up being tossed on the ground of having persecuted instead of prosecuting the suspects.

Immediately after Kamya initiated her prosecution, Byenkya claimed how she was using her current office to persecute her over a past scandal which purportedly saw the then minister for Lands falsely soliciting for a supplementary budget from the National Assembly in the name of ULC.  

Byenkya says because she denied having generated the issue of the supplementary budget as the minister was telling the National Assembly, Kamya felt embattled and saw her appointment as the IGG as a perfect opportunity to take revenge against Byenkya.

Well, those matters Byenkya raised came up in the past and the National Assembly actually rejected to appropriate the funds in billions, which Kamya reportedly had told the lawmakers ULC required.

While we don’t buy into Byenkya’s argument above wholesome, we nevertheless think it adds a spin to the beef between her and Kamya. 

It would certainly excite the court trial should Byenkya’s attorneys choose to pursue that line of defense. We shall really love to hear Kamya’s rejoinder to the scandal which has, since it broke out, never fully put to bed.  

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You’re Squatters: Mulago Hospital finally ‘found guilty’ of trespassing on the 5 Acre Land they have occupied for 60yrs https://theinvestigatornews.com/2019/10/youre-squatters-mulago-hospital-finally-found-guilty-of-trespassing-on-the-5-acre-land-they-have-occupied-for-60yrs/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=youre-squatters-mulago-hospital-finally-found-guilty-of-trespassing-on-the-5-acre-land-they-have-occupied-for-60yrs Wed, 02 Oct 2019 01:35:17 +0000 https://theinvestigatornews.com/?p=665 KAMPALA, Uganda:Okulya n’abalangira tekikufuula mulangira,” is a Luganda popular adage, literally meaning that; “dining with Princes does not necessarily turn one into a Prince.” This is the situation Mulago National Referral Hospital administration find themselves in, given their status at the five acre piece of land, which they have occupied for the last 60 years, the Investigator exclusively report.

That Mulago Hospital management has been involved in this land dispute with the Administrator General for over a two years, is a known fact in Ugandan media and to all the residents around the national health facility. However, unless the Attorney General wakes up on the wrong side of his bed, Mulago is currently seen as typical trespassers on their six decades’ ‘owned’ property.

The Investigator can authoritatively report that having wriggled, held meetings, brainstormed their wits out, interpreted laws, sought public sympathy and fought all tribes of wars to be named the true owners of the land comprised in Kibuga Block 29, Plot 846 in Mulago, Mulago Hospital Management have utterly failed to show proof of their claims, a stance that left the Administrator General with no choice but to trot to the government legal mind, the Attorney General, for redress.

For some years now, Mulago has been pulling ropes with the Administrator General (AG) who rightfully administers the property on behalf of the late Sefasi K. Kiwanuka’s surviving descendants. Available documents indicate that Kiwanuka acquired the land on October 24th 1938. It is however little known how, Mulago has been occupying the same without any interferences for the last 60 years.

And basing on that fact, the management and probably public members reluctantly asserted that its government land, hence driving on the same myths to claim so, even long after the rightful owners eventually ‘resurrected’ to reclaim it. Indeed, following the AG’s call on the Attorney General’s arbitration, the latter recently led a team of stakeholders to inspect the land and revelers laughed it off, looking at it as ‘obvious’ wastage of time. “That must be government land,” claimed several of them.

In his wisdom only compared to the biblical King David’s in this scenario, the Deputy Attorney General, Hon. Mwesigwa Rukutana had elected to get the definite answers from all the claimants and stakeholders by not listening to them separately but all collectively.

Sources privy with the arrangements informed us that the government’ legal mind comprised an inquiry committee with all relevant government institutions represented. “At any particular moment when any of them missed a sitting, he would call them directly and follow the phone call with a written communication, therefore demanding an involuntary official response in the process,” offered the source.

The unimpeachable source names some of the inquiry composition members as representatives from even Internal Security Organization (ISO) which, had also investigated the matter but whose findings were shunned by Mulago. “Others were from KCCA Surveyors Department, Uganda Land Commission, Land Registration Commission and Mulago Hospital Administration represented by the ED Dr. Baterana Byarugaba.

Our fly-on-the-wall in the string of meetings held two months back reveals that whereas it looked costly and tiresome, the Attorney General’s modus operandi could solve the longstanding standoff between all parties. “Unless otherwise, it was clear Mulago has no stake on the land save for the sixty years’ occupation, two permanent structures and a few staff gardens with periodical crops,” said the impeccable source that actually attended all the meetings but with no authority to speak for the commission.

Our source generously offers that all the stakeholders concurred that actually, there was not a single other title, “not even a forged one” that was presented to the commission of inquiry but that of the Late Kiwanuka which, all members confirmed as the “true copy.” He adds that… “Interestingly, the Mulago ED insisted on several times that he had documents until the last minute when he gave up and conceded.”

The ED reportedly lost the battle when the Commissioner for Lands presented his report in affirmative of the rest of the members. “He finally said that he thought they owned the land because all the time they had stayed there, no one had ever claimed it. He had not even a handwritten document to present in claiming ownership,” said the source amidst a bout of laughter!

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Efforts to reach the Attorney General were fruitless as he never picked and or returned our repeated calls. In the same measure, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Hon. Betty Amongi’s comment was not secured as she never picked her calls either and, the Mulago Hospital ED Dr. Baterana’s known numbers were off all the time we called before filing this report last night.

Nevertheless, a knowledgeable source privy with the matter at the Uganda Land Commission on condition of anonymity offered that, given the stories he heard from the meetings, Mulago should lay their guns down on the matter. “Even by law, they (Mulago Hospital) cannot win since government has never shown interest in that piece of land and again if they (government) did, a compensation must be given to the Land Title legitimate holders.”… Watch this space…

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