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Two weeks ago, the president at state house Entebbe hosted supporters of two rival ministers Jane Aceng and Betty Amongi who are battling for Lira woman MP seat in Lango region.
Amongi and her hubby Jimmy Akena had a month a earlier secretly met Museveni and made many accusations against Aceng while at state house. Museveni decided to call a follow up meeting to hear Aceng’s side. Amongi was asked to bring 15 supporters and Aceng 15 too.
But strangely, Aceng had diehard UPCs in her team, just like Amongi had NRM cheerleaders too like Dina Bua, Otuke MPs Paul Omara and Julius Acen.
Omara, who for long has been expecting to be made a minister and told the president about his CV, accused Aceng of insisting to situate the Otuke hospital in Lokwang sub county as opposed to his native sub county. He called this political sabotage by Aceng using her position as minister of health.
His Otuke MP colleague Julius Acen cried to the president saying he was sometime back arrested and locked up after being found in posession of a land title relating to land in Lira city which belongs to Uganda police.
He said that Dr. Aceng is a bad person because she didn’t come to his rescue. He said she should have used her influence as a minister to order the area police and RCC Lawrence Egole not to reprimand him.
Museveni said this wasn’t a serious accusation because there is no way Aceng or any other minister can support or cause any private person, even if its an MP, to become the owner of police land which is supposed to be public land.
That would be illegal and abuse of office. Museveni explained he has a lot of history about that police land in Lira because even the IGP had written to him about it.
He said the district land boards trying to hijjack police land and issue land titles on it was a rampant problem and gave the example of Mbarara district where something similar had happened, prompting higher authorities to intervene.
In the end, the meeting clearly saw there was nothing Aceng would have done to prevent the Otuke MP from being reprimanded for having a title on what is supposed to be private land.
Another pro-Amongi speaker referred to Lira businessmen who had got arrested and had their land titles canceled on grounds that they had fraudulently acquired public land following a dubious titling and inventory-making exercise by the old Lira district land board.
The speaker said all these tycoons were in problems because Dr. Aceng wasn’t willing to use her clout as a powerful minister in NRM government to shield them.
Before Aceng could even respond, a gentleman, who has served as GISO or ISO head for Lira city west division for more than 20 years, offered to explain.
He gave a long genesis of land problems and land grabbing in Lira city. That the problem began with the titling of the land by the old DLB in 2017, long before Aceng even joined politics.
The ISO man explained to the president that he was the first one to become aware of this land grabbing problem because the old Lira DLB bosses left out a lot of land when creating the inventory in 2017. The GISO man explained to the president that a lot of land was left out and later on shared by powerful people in Lira city.
The ISO man said he did a comprehensive report and reported everything to police of Lira city but nothing was done to protect public land. Instead, individual police investigators were compromised and backed off the investigations.
The GISO told the president that he got stuck with his information which he later on delivered to Gen Henry Isoke of the state house anti corruption unit in Kampala.
He thanked the president for appointing an incorruptible and fearless man in Isoke. He owned up being the whistle blower who instigated the state house anti-corruption unit to get involved.
This also exonerated Aceng who the president repeatedly said wasn’t in politics yet as of 2017 when the Lira public land problem started. Amongi’s team also had some NRM cadres who were unable to participate in party elections recently because they were deleted from the party register by the party’s EC. These accused Aceng saying she feared some of them may stand against her for the NRM flag bearer for Lira city woman MP seat.
Aceng was defended against this too on grounds that the deletion and cleaning of the register, resulting into removal of members who are openly hostile to NRM in favor of UPC’s Betty Amongi, was effected by the Kampala-based party electoral commission which investigated and confirmed that their conduct had breached NRM rules and regulations on party discipline.
Such deleted members raised their voices during the state house meeting while demanding that Museveni cancels Aceng’s election as NRM chairperson for Lira city, besides reinstating them back on the party register.
Museveni refused this blackmail and instead promised to send his own team to investigate and write for him a report. He said he will call another meeting after thoroughly investigating what exactly happened.
The other allegation related to the hospital project which the Karuma dam project Chinese contractors had donated to the community of nearby Oyam as part of their CSR.
The MoH was approached for technical guidance and it was advised that the project goes to Oyam north constituency since Betty Amongi’s Oyam south was already being served by the well established Apero hospital which is a church-managed facility. It’s doing well, having existed for nearly 100 years.
The Amongi team told Museveni that insisting to locate the Chinese donated hospital in Oyam north was an act of political sabotage by Aceng.
The Aceng group explained that the health minister had calculated to have the hospital in Oyam north so that people there get a good hospital too besides sharing the same with their neighbors in Kole district-since Oyam south was already being served by Apero hospital, which is church-owned.
It also emerged that the Kamdin land in Oyam south belonged to some powerful Lango politician who was supposed to get even hundreds of millions of shillings in compensation for the land on which the hospital was to eventually be established.
It was demonstrated to Museveni that even after the ministry of health had given its technical advice, the hospital was nevertheless defiantly situated in Oyam south where it ended up becoming a white elephant.
A one Adan, who was some months back recorded bargaining for sex with a girl who turned out to be underage, also used the same state house meeting to deceptively tell the president that he lost his job as manager for Citadel Tower, which is one of the busiest commercial buildings in Lira city, because of Aceng’s sabotage.
The truth is that the owner of the building felt scandalized after the sex audio emerged on whatsapp forums and responded by firing Adan who ended up losing his job as nanager for the building.
After 10 hours of endless trivial accusations, Museveni told his guests that he needed to create time to attend to other things and dismissed the meeting. As always, he ordered Nalweyiso to arrange transport refund for each of the leaders from Lango.
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