By Mulengera Reporters
Buvuma County MP Robert Migadde, who heads pressure group ‘Buganda on Museveni’ which the ruling party improvised as a vehicle to reclaim the central region while countering NUP’s Muwanga Kivumbi-led Buganda Caucus in Parliament, has publicly confessed that it’s increasingly becoming hard to uproot and defeat Presidential Candidate Bobi Wine in the Island district.
Speaking at his Buvuma district’s Nairembi Sub County headquarters during a Tuesday public Baraza that was organized by State House and Lands State Minister Dr. Sam Mayanja to resolve BIDCO project-related PAPs compensation, Migadde referred to a long private phone call President Museveni made to him in February 2021 demanding to know why Buvuma voters had all of a sudden turned against the Movement in favour of Bobi Wine’s NUP.
Migadde, who is one of the very few NRM MPs who survived that year’s Kyagulanyi wave in Buganda region, told people at the Tuesday Baraza that: “|I told him [Museveni] that we were defeated mainly because of two issues. One related to the army operations on the lake against illegal fishing and secondly, the issue of land, regarding the palm oil project affected persons [PAPs] who surrendered their land to facilitate the implementation of the BIDCO project but hadn’t been compensated since 2014.”
Migadde, who was flanked by Museveni’s Special Personal Assistant on Anti-Corruption (SPA-AC) Counsel Rebecca Atwine through whom the big man from Rwakitura sought to intervene to calm down the angry public opinion in Buvuma ahead of his Saturday 3rd January 2026 campaign tour, admitted that the district residents have since become more aggrieved against the President and his ruling NRM party than was the case in 2021.
Speaking frankly and truthfully as always, Migadde admitted that much of the grievances that caused islanders to revolt against the NRM in 2021 have remained unresolved today, five years later. He said the army operations on the lake were halted very recently and it’s too early to predict the impact and how much political dividend Gen Museveni and other NRM candidates will be reaping in the ballot box come 15th January 2026.
He then spoke about the BIDCO compensation issue, which he admitted had been mismanaged by the concerned officials at the Ministries of Lands (which has to handle verification and valuation of PAPs claims), Finance which is supposed to release the money and that of Agriculture (MAAIF), which is charged with the actual payments to the PAPs. Migadde castigated officials who initially connived with mafia groups to falsify project affected persons’ lists by putting in fictitious claimants while sidelining and alienating genuine bibanja owners.
The Agriculture Ministry is home to the Oil Palm Project (OPP) through which the GoU partnered with the BIDCO investor to introduce and promote palm oil growing on the islands of Kalangala and Buvuma. The President’s idea was to modernize the islands, create jobs for his country’s youths and promote soap manufacturing as opposed to importing it.
The BIDCO manufacturing required steady source of raw materials (chiefly palm oil/ebinazi) to facilitate sustained soap manufacturing. All this has been achieved to the extent that Uganda now exports soap to DRC and other regional markets, all courtesy of Gen Museveni’s vision of being able to see far even at the time when the political elite were up against the BIDCO project claiming it would endanger the environment.
Whereas the H.E’s objectives along those lines were, to a great extent, have since achieved, some of the families which surrendered their bibanja/land to facilitate palm oil growing, as early as early 2010s, have remained uncompensated up to this day. Under the PPP, the GoU was obliged to facilitate land acquisition as the investor implements the project. That is how compensating PAPs came to fall on the shoulders of the GoU whose Ministries of Lands, Agriculture and Finance where the front line agencies.
Some of the PAPs were compensated but a majority weren’t. They were sidelined as mafia actors came into the picture and put themselves on the lists and ended up being compensated for land that was forfeited by someone else. Yet the genuine PAPs ended up being pushed off their land and became homeless, even without compensation. Such Bibanja owners, in their thousands, are the ones who amplified anti-regime sentiments on Buvuma island, having waited in vain since 2014.
Honorable Migadde now says that, as of 2021 elections, Buvuma district had 40,000 eligible voters; 7,000 of whom had negatively been directly affected or impacted by the BIDCO project because of the fact that their bibanjas were taken under the project yet they were never compensated. Some were undercompensated after the size of their kibanja was reduced by half, and in some cases thrice. All this fraud was committed in order to enable deal-makers and Kampala-based power brokers in government to get a slice of the land to use to get themselves onto the PAPs list and subsequently be able to claim for compensation.
After being ignored by every government office they approached over the years, the affected residents reached out to the RDC’s office and every RDC that resisted bribery and tried to be of help, ended up being controversially transferred. Determined to fight on as opposed to relenting, the affected persons approached the incorruptible Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja who brought their issue to the attention of the President.
During his PDM tour of Buvuma last June, Gen Museveni was able to meet some of these claimants through their representatives and get to understand what happened first hand. As of that time, a civil suit was active in the Mukono High Court where 400 of the affected persons had instituted a representative action against the GoU. They were demanding for Shs101bn in compensation, which they had been pursuing from government since 2014.
Museveni apologized to them during that PDM engagement and persuaded the ring leaders to withdraw the court case. He also got them to agree to reduce their claim from the original Shs101bn and to accept mere Shs28bn. This was arrived at after negotiations between the claimants’ lawyers and the President’s government team.
Museveni, in writing directed the PSST to make sure that money is found and the PAPs are urgently paid off even if it meant using the supplementary budget approach. This news website has seen a letter written by PSST Ramathan Goobi indicating that Shs14bn had been released and passed on to MAAIF as first instalment, in fulfillment of the President’s directive. However, the PAPs never got the money.
It’s against this background that 400 representatives at the beginning of December revolted and stormed State House Entebbe demanding to see the President. Gen Museveni dispatched Atwine and Mayanja who engaged them and agreed to reduce the number to 20 representatives as the 380 were facilitated to return to Buvuma. The remaining 20 were booked in a secure hotel in Entebbe as government quickly processes their Shs28bn for compensation.
Gen Museveni personally rang the Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary ordering him to make sure they are promptly paid. Several subsequent meetings were held involving Mayanja, Atwine and several MAAF technocrats concerned with the OPP project. However, up to now the Shs14bn and an additional Shs2.5bn (the MAAIF leadership had promised to add on to make it Shs16.5bn) hasn’t yet been received. This has intensified anti-Museveni sentiments among the ordinary people in Buvuma, ahead of the 3rd January campaign tour by the NRM Presidential Candidate.
Mayanja is clearly angry at the MAAIF PS who he openly accused of standing in the way of the President’s clear directive during the Tuesday Baraza.
Saying they had during this month of December been asked to quickly open new bank accounts, after those they opened in 2014 became dormant and got closed by the banks, the Buvuma residents tearfully narrated during the Tuesday Baraza how they have daily been traveling to Jinja and Mukono to check on their bank accounts only to find there is no money. “He is a liar, we are tired of his lies,” Buvuma residents ranted as Sam Mayanja furiously castigated the MAAIF PS during his address at the Tuesday Baraza.
Mayanja had, in writing, required the MAAIF PS to personally travel to Buvuma and attend the Tuesday Baraza but the retired UPDF General was nowhere to be seen and even the Ministry officials who attended on behalf of OPP project were too terrified to say anything to the gathering at the Baraza. The crowd hostility was simply too much and none of the MAAIF/OPP officials had the guts to come to the microphone.
BRING BOU BULLION VANS:
Buvuma LC5 Chairman Adrian Wasswa Ddungu praised the President for the vision and for his good wishes for Buvuma but castigated technocrats from the concerned Ministries for being indifferent to the plight of the PAPs who lost their land to the OPP project as early as 2014.
The district Chairman controversially proposed that instead of wasting people’s time with having to open bank accounts which commercial banks have kept declaring dormant since the year 2014, the President directs and the money just gets delivered in Bank of Uganda bullion vans and transparently paid out to the PAPs in order to avoid extortion by Kampala-based middle men who keep claiming to know key decision makers at the three concerned government Ministries.
Correcting the LC5 Chairman, Mayanja advised the Buvuma residents to direct their anger only at MAAIF technocrats because that is where the problem currently is regarding why the PAPs haven’t yet got their money. Mayanja said that should Museveni once again lose the Buvuma vote, as Migadde predicted, blame should go to the MAAIF officials who have decided to continue dragging their feet barely two weeks to the voting day.
SPA-AC Rebecca Atwine, who continues to closely be in touch with her Principal regarding the Buvuma Shs28bn compensation emergency, demonstrated the extent to which the President has personally gone to ensure justice for the affected PAPs only to be let down by the indolence of technocrats at the concerned government Ministries.
Militant as always, Mayanja went as far as demanding for the immediate arrest and prosecution of the MAAIF PS who he said has no reason to defy or delay the implementation of the President’s written directives on the matter. He read out the relevant legal provisions from the Constitution which make the President very powerful to the extent that PSs have to quickly implement his directives including verbal ones.
Mayanja admitted that the Buvuma residents, who he ended up imploring to forgive and vote his boss Gen YK Museveni come 15th January, were justified to be angry because their compensation has been unduly delayed yet the Constitution demands prompt compensation. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
