Museveni’s hand in Amongi lands saga

Amongi demanded that KDLB reverses the decision to renew the lease within two weeks, by November 15, 2017 in order to enable her report back to the Departed Asians Custodian Property Board.

Amongi also claimed that Cabinet had picked interest in the matter and made directives about the management of the departed Asians properties.

In Kudilp’s absence, officials at the Lands Ministry held a public hearing and made a decision to cancel his new lease.

Nsibambi would later learn about the plot to take over the land after being summoned by the police to explain his board’s decision to grant a fresh lease to Kuldip.

To fight the grab, Edward Sekabanja, Kuldip’s lawyer, filed a court case on behalf of Kuldip.

In his affidavit, Kuldip notes that since December 2017, he received reports from his tenant, the manager of Faze 2, Restaurant that various persons were visiting the property and inquiring about its ownership as they had information that it was up for sale.

Sekabanja told The Independent that the case was still before court. Sekabanja was also slated to supply the commission with more evidence.

Away from the land grabbing accusations, the commission heard that Amongi has been irregularly directing officials at the Land Ministry to make vast compensation payments.

Evidence before the inquiry indicated that between 2016 and 2017, the Lands Minister directed Albert Jethro Mugumya, the Uganda Land Commission (ULC) Undersecretary to make urgent payment of land compensation of hundreds of millions of shillings to some nine people.

The land inquiry heard that Amongi contravened public service protocol when she directed Mugumya, the accounting officer instead of the ULC chairman to effect the payments.

Apart from Amongi, several officials at the Lands Ministry, have over time been implicated in corruption charges.

In August 2016, President Museveni even ordered Amongi to deal with the officials in the Land Registry who are involved in fraud, corruption, abuse of office and forgery at the Ministry.

Sarah Kulata, the then commissioner for land registration, who also headed the department of land management and administration and John Moses Magala, a senior government valuer, who was accused of inflating land compensation value for Kampala-Entebbe Expressway by billions of shillings, were named.

Interestingly, Kulata had previously been interdicted by the IGG only to be returned to office by former Lands Minister, Daudi Migereko.

Yet the IGG had wrote to Lands Ministry authorities noting that she had established that between 2011-2013, 44 complaints alleging fraud, corruption, abuse of office, forgery and negligence against Land Registrars were lodged in Kulata’s office.

When Migereko was tainted, Museveni threw him out. It is not clear what fate awaits Amongi – if any.
“It is unfortunate,” John Livingstone Okello-Okello, a former commissioner at the Lands Ministry told The Independent, “If this was in a serious government, Amongi would have been suspended, asked to step down or dismissed.”

He noted that while corruption at the Lands office is not new, the latest developments show that it is getting worse.