Charles Twine, who speaks for Police’s CID and land Protection Unit, says the IGP Okoth Ochora is very angry that Kampala District Land Board (KDLB), which city lawyer Yusuf Nsibambi has chaired for 10 years, could dare lease out Kiira Road Police land including the playground. Twine says a group of investors and developers (he calls them proxies) applied to KDLB seeking to be leased land in Kamwokya on which the Kiira Road Police Division sits including the nearby playground used by the community and children of police officers. This is the playground to your left from Wandegeya/Kamwokya as you drive towards Kiira Road Police main entrance.
Twine says his boss Okoth Ochora has vowed not to rest until all culprits are bought to book. “The truth is that from what is emerging so far from preliminary investigations this is a powerful racket and Everest Muvanenza, who is continues to be in our custody as one of those who applied for the land, is just a proxy of the rich people whose identity we now have. We are going to move against those people,” Twine says in an interview. He adds that Jacqueline Atugonza, who is the CEO for KDLB that was arrested with Muvanenza, was released on police bond Wednesday night “because we realized she has a lot of information implicating her bosses in the Board and we are going to use her as a State witness against them.”
Twine adds that during interrogation, wealthy Atugonza who spent two days in detention, pleaded her innocence and volunteered a lot of information implicating her bosses who comprise the KDLB which Nsibambi chairs. “From what she has disclosed and corroborated so far we want to establish who exactly chaired that Board meeting that voted that allocation targeting Police land and under what circumstances. What was the procedure that they followed to convince themselves that Plot 150-156, which comprises of the Police land at Kiira Road, was available for them to allocate to Muvanenza and other applicants? We are looking at a racket involving many people including the members of the Area Land Committee [for Kampala Central Division]. They will have a lot to answer as well and this is just the beginning of far reaching investigations that are going to be conducted,” Twine vowed clarifying his boss Okoth Ochora is more than determined to “leave no stone unturned.” The Kampala Central Area Land Committee is chaired by veteran radio personality Med Nsereko who this Thursday afternoon declined talking audibly about the issue when we twice placed a call to his known mobile phones.
The CID publicist says: “We have previously lost land at Kabalagala Police under almost similar circumstances. The developer to whom it was allocated has since taken Police to Court and its very expensive litigation which the IGP says must be avoided in future and to achieve that, we must be very decisive in the way we deal with the Kiira Road fraud to deter future fraudulent attempts to deprive the Force of its land. From what we have gathered so far, the practice is to have the title issued and then the processes are undertaken to ratify the entire transaction retrospectively.”
Twine says that from what they have gathered since the arrest of Muvanenza and Atugonza is that the intention of the real godfathers behind the fraudulent applicants for the Kiira Road land was to get the land titled and backdated in their names whereafter they can proceed to Court accusing Police of trespassing on their land. “They then use courts to talk big and cow everyone into negotiations during which they demand compensation,” says Twine adding they are more than sure the real guys who applied don’t have such money and clout to target such land belonging to a powerful institution of government. “They are proxies of wealthier individuals whose identities we have since established and we shall be closing in on all of them.”
He says that being a law and order agency, there is no way police can legitimately do its enforcement work to protect property rights of other citizens when it can’t protect its own land. “It’s very unfortunate for whoever is involved because the IGP has personally become very much interested in this matter and nobody is going to be spared regardless of the rank or status in society. Strong signals must be sent out to deter those that might harbor plans to target Police land in future,” Twine says on being told of restlessness at City Hall some of whose powerful officials have vowed to use big sums money to ensure the Kiira Road land investigations die a natural death. “I think it’s too late for whoever had those intentions of compromising investigations. The GEF file is already in place and many more people are going to be apprehended to explain their role in this big racket targeting police land.” That the IGP Okoth Ochora has already designated IT experts who are going to beef up Land Protection Unit head Charles Mutungi’s teams to raid the KCCA land offices to access and take away all the relevant information they require to boost investigations.
He says even their accomplices in the Lands Ministry are going to have their offices raided and combed for evidence. “The IGP has directed that we don’t only stop at Kiira Road Police land but even other stations whose land we now know continues to be targeted by the same racket.”
Twine says they have credible intelligence to the effect that the title for Kiira Road was issued and produced in the names of the current applicants long before even internal processes within KDLB, such as convening relevant meetings to discuss the availability of the land, were undertaken. “It’s what they have been doing in many cases and these are things Atugonza’s bosses in the Board will be required to explain themselves about.” Afande Twine says there is a possibility similar attempts to fraudulently transfer some of the police land elsewhere might have been made and it’s the reason why the investigations is going to be deepened to look at many other things. That at Kiira Road police, the target was to use fraudulently-issued KDLB title to claim not just the playground land but the entire land that is police’s in the Kamwokya neighborhood.
“Whereas we are still assessing the possibility of Atugonza being our witness against her bosses, it’s still 50-50. It can go either way if we find her hostile, we shall still proceed having her prosecuted and her other bosses. The bottom-line is Kabalagala was a very big lesson. The IGP can’t take any chances on threats to police land anymore. We won’t be giving a damn anymore whatever happens, this is a fight we must win and no stone will be left unturned,” vows Twine in relation to the continued cooperation they are anticipating from KDLB CEO Jacqueline Atugonza who we have impeccably established was supposed to be arrested earlier on by the IGG having been separately petitioned by aggrieved citizens but the lock down saved her. Atugonza made the IG become even more determined to clip her wings after detectives rang her demanding that she comes over for some interrogation and she instead responded to them with extreme rudeness claiming she was too busy to be summoned so casually just like that.
Credit: mulengeranews.com
