AUCTION BLUES: Sensible Options Available to Aya as He Desperately Tells Judge Title For Nakasero Hotel Is Missing

Wise men stated that once a man finds himself in great danger of drowning, such a man will clutch on any straw. This has been proved true in the case of South Sudanese investor, Muhammad Hamid Aya.
Faced with the impending auction of his hotel located in the leafy Upper Nakasero area of Kampala Capital City, Aya has told the court about how he lost the property’s land Title seventeen years ago. 

Aya made those assertions in a telephone conversation with Justice Stephen Mubiru after the judge contacted him during a court session on Friday since he had chosen not to come to court with the land Title just as he had been duly instructed. ” I don’t have the Title. I lost it seventeen years ago,” Aya claimed as the Judge interrogated him over why he had chosen not to appear in court complete with the hotel’s Title as he had been directed by the court’s deputy registrar. The order was first issued in October and repeated in November but on both occasions Aya disobeyed the court by either not sending the Title through his lawyers, coming to court with it, or with an explanation as to why he had been unable to implement the order.

Changing Strategies

Other than obeying the order, Aya changed his lawyers for the third time and instructed the new ones of Rukutana, Mwesigwa, and Company Advocates to go and ask the judge to suspend the order of sale of his hotel but without good reasons, prompting the judge to dismiss the entire application since the court could not entertain a man who had chosen to willfully disobey a court order and because his application itself was unconvincing.

Aya’s new assertions will be quickly interpreted by intelligent people as being a cleverer but futile plot by a man so scared and therefore using all means no matter useless ones to save his multi-billion shillings hotel from the impending auction. But merely because Aya claims that the hotel’s Title is irretrievably lost cannot stop the court order of auction of the property to be implemented to the last letter since in that case, the judge can easily direct the land registry to make and issue out a special certificate of Title and then the auction will proceed normally and legally based on that.  

Sensible Options

Subsequently, since stunts cannot save his hotel from being auctioned no matter how long the process will take to finally take place, let us volunteer a few sensible options Aya can take and intelligently save some money off the auction other than resorting to futile stunts such as the instant one where he claims that the Title of the hotel is irretrievably lost.
One, Aya can permit the auction to go on but insist that the hotel is properly valued first before the auction itself can proceed for him to establish its current true monetary value. That way, Aya will be able to get the balance from the proceeds of the sale and the rest of the funds used to clear the ancient debt he owes to the South African moneylenders which looks like he has no known resources himself currently to use to pay off and then the distressing matter will naturally and sensibly come to a welcome and sensible end.

Navigating the Auction

Relatedly, Aya can get his buyer someone like Sudhir Ruparelia and arrange with the money lenders to permit him to sell off the hotel himself and then pay off the judgment creditors and then keep the balance of the money. Supposing he is credit-worthy, Aya can arrange with any financial institution around the country to pay off his debts and then he and his new bank work out an arrangement of rescheduling payment of his debts in such a manner as to make it easier for him to conveniently pay off those debts over a long time. Come to think of it. Aya can speak nicely to his old friend, Mzee Yoweri Museveni, and convince him to pay off his judgment creditors and then refund the money in the future after he has financially stabilized.

There is also the option of lobbying the president to persuade the government to buy shares in Aya Hotel as it was done in the case of Roko Construction and then save the Hotel from being sold on the cheap. Finally, we are preparing our invoice for onward transmission to Mr. Muhammad Hamid Aya to sort us out for the advice we have rendered to him. Yet we forget that Mr. Aya is short of cash
currently.