FROM GRABBING KABAKA’S LAND AT KIGO TO GRABBING CHURCH LAND AT OWINO MARKET.
After grabbing Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi’s land at Kigo, and altering the same into his own name, controversial Kampala businessman, Hajj Hamis Segawa Kiggundu is mired in yet a fresh land grabbing scandal involving land belonging to a Catholic Church in Owino market.
Puzzlingly, the said land hosts the memorial site for one of the revered and legendary twenty-two Ugandan martyrs known as Balikuddembe. At the site, is a place where low-income Ugandans conduct the business of selling second-hand clothes and shoes who are now likely to be displaced by Ham’s controversial land dealings.
Balikuddembe memorial site where he was speared to death following his failure to make the journey to Namugongo, has since turned into one of Uganda’s religious tourist sites that has over the years continued to earn considerable foreign exchange for the government of Uganda.
But now that Kiggundu, who is popularly known as Ham, is currently encroaching on Balikuddembe’s memorial site, the country is likely to lose income from tourists who have been frequenting the place to pay their respects to the said martyr.
Notably, Kabaka Mutebi had defeated Ham after the Commissioner of Land Registration, Baker Mugaino cancelled the contentious land titles that he had created over the land owned by the Kabaka.
Ham had used the Wakiso land office, convincing it to create another land title over Kabaka’s mailo land title which had interestingly been in existence for more than one hundred years and, by the way, before Ham himself was born.
Between a rock and hard place
Ham had diverted Kabaka’s land with the intention to use the same to construct his private state-of-art stadium which project has since been put off despite his lawyers of Muwema and Company Advocates having applied to the court for a review of the Commissioner of Land Registration’s order that cancelled his contentious land titles.
After being cornered by Buganda’s learned Attorney General, Christopher Bwanika who famously remarked that Kabaka’s land could not be merely discovered by present-day fraudsters like Hannington Speke discovered River Nile and then put their names on it, Ham strangely stated his own land was located in Lake Victoria. Ham’s remark was really laughable considering that water bodies are not constitutionally supposed to be encroached on by anybody. More interestingly, Ham is a trained lawyer who ought therefore to have known better than uttering such outrageous remarks.
Returning to the land hosting Balikuddembe’s memorial site in Owino market, the Catholic Church has already expressed its determination to fight off Ham’s manoeuvres to grab the same. Despite Ham having already encroached on the land, blocking the road to the site, the Catholic Church insists the businessman is playing with fire. The Catholic church boasts of the largest number of believers, earning the institution a huge influence and leverage. How Ham will be able to defeat the said religious affiliation remains to be seen.
Furthermore, the Kampala city authorities vow they will not let Ham encroach on land that is owned by the Church and have given him a seven-day ultimatum to pull down his developments or wait to be dragged to court.
Keep tuned in for more of HAM’s land-grabbing-related scandals.
Compiled by our investigating team
Bulletin Media
