President Yoweri Museveni has always heard reports that the Kampala District Land Board (KDLB) is riddled with controversial land allocations in Kampala including sometimes giving away land belonging to public roads to private developers like was the case with Wilson Road-and more recently Wilson Lane. It’s something that always happens due to curious connivance with some key officials in the KCCA technical wing at City Hall. But Museveni has always been patient and never in a burry to crack the whip.
However, the recent intelligence information he got that the same KDLB had sat and purported to lease out police land to a private developer without any claim of right made Gen Museveni lose his patience. He immediately directed his anti-corruption teams to swing and arrest whoever was involved in the Board decision to lease out police land to a private developer called Everest Munvaneza, a Ugandan businessman of Rwandese origin.
The land in question connects to the Kiira Road Police Division’s playground. This is very prime land located in Kamwokya. Being one that belongs to the Uganda Police Force, Gen Museveni couldn’t understand where the Yusuf Nsibambi-led KDLB would get the guts to purport to allocate it to a private developer.
Because he doesn’t sit at his City Hall-based KDLB offices, since his wars with Jennifer Musisi who at some point plotted arresting him from there, Yusuf Nsibambi has always found his own way to keep his distance and avoid being personally implicated because his absence always permits the technical staff (led by Jackie Atugonza) in the land board to carry out many transactions behind his back as he enjoys himself at his Nkozi Clays private office situated on level 5 of Diamond Trust Building (DTB) opposite Charm Towers.
So, on this latest occasion, the wrath of the Museveni-prompted Police operatives from the Land Protection Unit of the UPF, backed up by detectives from Col Edith Nakalema’s Anti-Corruption Unit, harvested KDLB’s light-skinned Secretary Jacqueline Atugonza who spent the Tuesday night at Jinja Road Police. She remains confined in Police detention and will be arraigned before Court anytime this week.
The powerful Jacqueline Atugonza is the secretary running the KDLB secretariat and she is the one who does most of the donkey work only calling in Chairman Nsibambi to chair a board meeting at the tail end of the process. In every decision they make, the KDLB must closely work with the technical departments of KCCA though this seldom happens. They must also liaise with the Division-based Area Land Committees which in the case of Kampala Central Division, where Kiira Road falls, is chaired by veteran radio personality Med Nsereko of CBS Radio Buganda. It’s unclear which role the Nsereko committee played in this latest land bonanza decision that Gen Museveni wants reversed and all culprits immediately prosecuted.
Having effectively sidelined KCCA physical planners, registrar and surveyors from whom technical advice is supposed to be obtained, the Atugonza-advised KDLB went ahead and altered the particulars of the police land and re-created the same as Plot 150-156 and subsequently leased it to the private developer, something Gen Museveni says is abominable and whoever was involved must severely be sanctioned. Because they are close work place friends, KCCA ED Eng Kitaka has always shielded and protected Atugonza but couldn’t prevail this time round.
Charles Twine, who speaks for CIID and the Land Protection Unit as well, has this Wednesday afternoon confirmed to us that they are continuing to detain and interrogate Atugonza and that many more were being targeted. “I’m heading to a meeting right now but will give you all the details later. All I can confirm per now is that she is being detained over some dubious land transactions involving KDLB for which she is the CEO,” is all Atwine said via telephone link. Moses Kamoga, an influential member of KDLB, ironically denied being aware of his own CEO Jacqueline Atugonza being arrested over the curious leasing of police land in Kamwokya.
Inside sources close to the investigations have informed us that Atugonza, and others arrested so far, will need divine intervention to come out on bail as urgently as she desires. Since the COVID19 lockdown, the practice has been for such people arrested by ACU to be remanded without being permitted bail. This has so far befallen the OPM officials, NAGRIC’S Dr. Charles Lagu, Abid Alam and even Gen Henry Tumukunde caged much earlier on.
What makes it even more complicated for Atugonza is the fact that besides the Kiira Road police land, there are other transactions by the KDLB that Gen Museveni wants inquired into because he has been getting reports from aggrieved citizens disputing the same transactions as curious. The more recent one involved Wilson Lane, a stretch linking up Wilson Road to Kampala Road that was allocated to a private developer well knowing its meant for road purposes. Unlike a road, a lane is always dedicated for servicing the commercial properties in the area and the investigators will be asking Atugonza about the circumstances under which the KCCA technical wing gave a no objection and subsequently a permit authorizing a private developer to plan erecting private commercial properties on land whose designated land use is for passage purposes.
There is also controversy surrounding the circumstances under which another access road in Bukoto was initially allocated to an official of the KDLB for private development before subsequently being passed on to another private developer who has since put up a very small storied building. This has denied residents an opportunity to use the lane to access their residential and commercial properties in this Bukoto neighborhood where Plot 21A has since been created. Some of the affected neighbors are big-name citizens who have since found access to the President calling on him to unleash his anti-corruption Tsar Edith Nakalema to move in and crack the whip.
The same Bukoto allocation has since been protested in a petition to National Physical Planning Board under the Lands Ministry and Chairman Vincent Byendayimira has since been unable to act and have KCCA technical officials, who sanctioned such allocation, sanctioned. The Board hasn’t been very effective in vetoing KDLB allocations largely because they are poorly funded and lack enforcement mechanisms to prevent the KCCA big men from doing as they wish.
The little we know about Atugonza, a good friend of some big person in City Hall, is that she is a female lawyer hailing from Bunyoro and she is in a distance marital relationship with a wealthy Muzungu spouse who doesn’t live here. The light-skinned corporate babe has been working at City Hall since 2013 when she first joined the KCCA legal department before crossing over to the KDLB to replace a one Martha in October last year with the active support of her key ally Eng Kitaka, the Ag ED. “We have always desired to inquire into the dealings of that KDLB but Atugonza’s powerful backers in the KCCA technical wing would move in and prevent us but now that the President is keenly interested, we are going to have a field day digging up many things,” says a source at Nakalema’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) of State House.
Credit: mulengeranews.com
