Friday, March 29News That Matters

Mukono residents petition M7 over land wrangles.

Over 2,000 residents in Mukono district have petitioned President Yoweri Museveni to intervene on their being violently evicted and property destruction by a one Nicholas Kabagambe.
The residents from the villages of Nkulagirire, Makukuba, and Kaabulo in the sub-county of Nabbale also petitioned the Minister of Lands and Urban Development Minister Judith Nabakooba over the same matter.
According to the residents, Kabagambe acquired the land which measures over 680 acres from the family of the late Andrew Guludene. It is alleged that with the help of officials at the Mukono district land offices, Kabakagambe secured a freehold title on the said land and told them to leave or be forced to do so. He has since then deployed security over the land.
The situation got worse when a resident identified as Hakim Ssendagire was shot in the leg as he was trying to save his cows from some unknown men who were trying to seize them from his 70-acre kibanja.
Ssendagire said his attackers, who he claimed to be from Kabagambe’s cattle farm in the area, cut down over 1,000 trees on his kibanja, poisoned 20 cows, and killed 200 goats on his farm.
Although Ssendagire survived the attack, he limps up to date. This prompted the then Lands minister Beti Kamya to write to the RDC of Mukono imploring him to stop this brutality and evictions.
However,within this month, the residents were once again attacked by people who claim to be working for Kabagambe and they destroyed their crops including banana plantations, coffee, eucalyptus trees and sugar canes.
According to available records, the land under contention is part of Kabaka’s 350 square miles land estate which was returned to Buganda in 1993.
The spokesperson of Buganda Land Board, Denis Bugaya said indeed this is Kabaka’s land.
He explained that when some of the residents of the said villages reached out, the board immediately petitioned the ministry of Lands to cancel Kabagambe’s land title because it was acquired illegally.
Bugaya noted that no one can obtain a freehold title on top of Kabaka’s official mailo, adding that it was wrong for Mukono district to offer such a title to someone else when they are aware that this is Kabaka’s land.
Kabagambe has, however, said that the land belongs to him because he acquired it through legal means and no one will stop him from utilising his land.
In 1980, one Andrew Guluddene got a 49-year lease on the land from Uganda Land Commission at a time when the land was under the administration of government, having been confiscated by the Milton Obote government from Buganda in 1966.
When the land was returned to Buganda in 1993, Guluddene took his lease title to Buganda Land Board in 2001 for variation and he started paying annual ground rent to Buganda Land Board.
However, when Guluddene died, his children; George Mulindwa, Robert Sebidde, Lilian Nakintu Guludene and Mercy Guludene colluded with Nicholas Kabagambe and fraudulently changed the tenure of his title from leasehold to freehold.
They changed the title from leasehold to freehold and after undertaking the said fraud, they purportedly sold the “fraudulent” freehold title to Nicholas Kabagambe.
Immediately after the illegal freehold title was transferred to Kabagambe, he started to violently evict bibanja holders on the land, destroying their property, crops and injuring many in the process.

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