ULC acting secretary Andrew Nyumba on Wednesday appeared before parliament’s sub-committee on defense which was set up to investigate irregularities on police’s land. The committee expected responses to queries regarding the land measuring 16.52 acres located at plots 2-96 along Katalima road in Naguru.
The land in question was in 2011 leased to the United Nations African Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (UNAFRI) for 99 years, but ULC later subleased the same land in 2015.
In his statement to the committee, Nyumba said that he had no documents to aid responses to queries regarding the land. He told the committee that ULC did not get enough time to locate files regarding the land. Nyumba requested to appear again before the committee on Tuesday next week with all the required documents regarding the land.
“The documents are there, give us the benefit of the doubt and we shall do our best to search for them,” Nyumba appealed.
Ruhinda County MP Donozio Kahonda, the chairperson of the committee directed that the documents be sent to the committee by Friday this week ahead of the Tuesday meeting. Kahonda said that this will give members of the committee time to study the documents. He also directed that Nyumba appears with all the relevant staff from the commission on Tuesday.
“There are titles that were issued by Uganda Land Commission. They issue titles with titles, we wanted them to explain to us how it happened and what motivated them. Secondly, we have titles that were given sublease where the mother lease had less grace period than the one which was given to the sublease. That one is unacceptable and we wanted Uganda Land Commission to explain to us,” said Kahonda.
In August, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Martins Okoth Ochola asked that UNAFRI vacates the police land over failure to develop it. In his statement to the sub-committee presented by the assistant IGP Richard Edyegu, the police boss said that UNAFRI had not proceeded to develop and utilize the land and that they have not proved to be beneficial to the government in as far as their mandate is concerned.
Uganda was in April 1998, selected by the conference of ministers of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) as the host of the UNAFRI whose objective was to promote collaborative activities and joint action on priority problems bearing on crime prevention and control in the development context.
Part of the obligations of the host country was to provide residential accommodation, office space, classrooms and furniture to the institute. This was the basis for the provision of a 99-year lease to UNAFRI in 2011 and this includes land housing 12 senior staff houses.
Edyegu told the sub-committee that UNAFRI has since failed to develop the land and even rented out most of the residential houses including the 12 senior staff houses for income generation contrary to the purpose for which the lease was given.
The committee learnt that the UNAFRI has since subleased 7.8 acres of the land to private business entities such as YUASA car bond and Future Group Limited. Edyegu says that this poses a security threat to the police establishment particularly because this is the same place that houses the command centre, armoury, counter-terrorism base and police headquarters.
“It is, therefore, our prayer that the land comprising plot 3 Mukabya road and plots 2-8 on Katalima road is returned to Uganda Police Force for further management and the 12 senior staff houses are immediately vacated and surrendered to Uganda Police Force,” he told MPs then.
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