Two senior Public Service officials have in the last week in Kampala, appeared in Court, battling charges of corruption, abuse of office, forgery and fraudulence.
The Commissioner for Land Registration, Baker Mugaino, and the Acting Commissioner for Land Registration, Jasper Kakooza of the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development (LHUD), invariably appeared in the Anti-corruption Court before Chief Magistrate Rachael Nakyazze. Both are contesting the listed charges and applied for bail from their recent incarceration.
On the instruction from the Office of the Inspector General of Government (IGG), and under the charge of IGG’s Head of Prosecution, Ms. Brenda Kimbugwe, Mugaino, was charged with abuse of office and corruption, when he irregularly and arbitrarily cancelled the certificates of the titles of certain pieces of land.
The land in question is Kibuga in Kisenyi; Namirenbe and Kisugu in Kampala; and Lweza in Wakiso District.
Eighteen years ago, in February, August and September, 2007, a businessman, Mr. Musa Kizito, mortgaged Kibuga Block 12 of plots; 658, 659 and 665, in Kisenyi, and Lweza Clays, to Tropical Bank to obtain a loan of UGX 400 million. To these pieces of land, Tropical Bank registered certificates if title. The bank went ahead and sold the Namirembe and Kisugu plots to another businessman, Mr. Gerald Akugizibwe; and, the Kisenyi plots to Namayiba Park Hotel.
To authenticate and reiterate its possession of the properties, the bank got a Court order to retrieve the mortgaged certificates copies from the Land Office. But last month, Mugaino, as an abuse of office, allegedly removed the Court orders and caveats that had been lodged on the certificates, and cancelled the titles of the certificates. This, in effect, freed the land in question to the market.
In a request to the contention over the issue, the IGG, Ms. Beti Kamya, ordered Mugaino’s interdiction last month to allow for the unalloyed investigation of the matter. But Mugaino challenged the IGG’s action in the Civil Division of the High Court.
And his arrest last week is a result of the contention of the matter. It may also mean a matter of power contest; of who is able to overcome the Court restrictions to their advantage. Similarly, Kakooza and nine others have been charged with the fraud of irregularly getting titles for land certificates. Kakooza is at the lead of the others in creating an overlapping title to land in Gomba District belonging to the Madhvani Group of Companies.
Accused alongside Kakooza are the Public officials: Sitends Magulu, the Mpigi District Physical Planner; Hakim Bassajjangabo, the Gomba District Senior Assistant Secretary; Gladys Nakanwagi, the Gomda District Labour Officer; Ismail Kayongo, former Gomba District Land Board Chairman; and, Ssiwulizz Sserunkuma, the LC1 of Mpongo Village in Gomba District.
The non-Public personnel are: Nuwahereza Katakanya, a businessman; David Nabimanya and George Mudenyi, both of Pyramid Security Group, the one working as Security Guard and the other as Security Supervisor, respectively; Haruna Kisenyi, a bodaboda rider; and Adbu Senoga, a casual labourer.
Accordingly, in his role as the Ministry’s surveyor, Kakooza allegedly fraudulently and in abuse of his office carried out an unauthorized and a forged boundary re-opening of 1, 450 acres of land. In the process, he created other titles to the pieces of land.
He and the nine others, eventually took possession of the land and destroyed more than 600 acres of Madhvani’s tea. Also, in the process they aggrandized and despoiled more than 540m acres of pristine land and created overlapping land titles.
Both Public Service officers have acted in contravention of their roles assigned to them by the Government. In effect they have gone against the dictates of the Solicitor General as implied in Section of the Land Act 88.
comments
