The high court in Kampala has ruled in favour of businessman Medard Kiconco in a case over the disputed ownership of land in Lusanja. Court has also granted Kiconco permission to permanently vacate the tenants within a period of one month.
The High court Land division has ordered the 127 residents who were evicted from the land on said Lusanja land and relocated themselves to immediately vacate it.
A sombre mood engulfed the court room which was filled to capacity by the affected residents when the judge made the final ruling.
A yet to be identified man collapsed at the High Court in Kampala on Friday after a judge ordered that over 100 families are to be vacate businessman Medard Kiconco’s Lusanja Land in Wakiso district.
The man who fainted was one of the affected residents who were dragged to court by Kiconco over claims that he had compensated them but they refused to vacate his land.
The land in dispute is part of a chunk of about 85 acres that the late Paul Bitarabeho bought in 1978 from the late mother of King Mwanga, Namasole Bagalaayeze Lunkusu.
Some of the land in Mpererwe was sold to the defunct Kampala City Council (KCC), which gazetted it in 1996 as a landfill for garbage disposal.
Bitarabeho’s descendants are said to have sold part of the land to Kiconco, who later evicted some of the tenants from it.
Kiconco maintains he bought the land comprised on block 206, plot 671 at Mpererwe in Kampala in 2016 while the residents say their land is on block 198, Folio 13 in Wakiso district.
The businessman says that by the time he bought the land from Bitarabeho’s descendants in 2013, there were only 17 squatters, whom he says he compensated.
They are Patrick Opedo, Harriet Nabuso, Samuel Muyanja, Agnes Namukasa, Madinah Nansereko, Christopher Mbogo, Christine Kayesu, John Ntale, Fred Kanyike, Sam Serunjobi, Mary Nankabirwa, John Kilabira, Kenneth Kizito, Bashir Kalema, Martin Ntale, Kabuye Ssekitoleko and Scovia Nyanzi.
January 12, 2017, Kiconco filed a suit at Nabweru Chief Magistrate’s Court, seeking orders for abetment of a nuisance, demolition order, delivery of vacant possession and award of damages plus costs of the suit.
The former Chief Magistrate Esther Rebecca Nasambu heard the matter experte (without the defendants filing a defence).
Later that year in October, Nasambu delivered judgment with orders declaring the defendants as trespassers, demolition of structures and sh20m in damages plus costs of the case.
It is upon this ruling that Kiconco went to the High Court’s execution and bailiff’s division and secured a demolition order from deputy registrar Baker Rwatooro on August 23, 2018.
The eviction attracted mixed reactions from many Ugandans, including President Yoweri Museveni, who visited the land with Justice Catherine Bamugemereire, the chairperson of the commission of land inquiry, on October 16, 2018, and halted further eviction and demolition of houses.
This prompted the Principal Judge, Yorokamu Bamwine, to direct the Land Division of the High Court head, John Eudes Keitirima to hear the case afresh.
December 14 last year, Keitirima ruled that the residents were wrongfully evicted from the Lusanja land because the trial magistrate had no powers to handle the case.
