By Ben Musanje
A sprawling land dispute in Bulindo, Kira Municipality, Wakiso district has pitted holders of long-standing registered titles against new claims over the same piece of land, exposing a trail of disputed acreage, unexplained changes in the land registry and questions about how the Ministry of Lands has handled competing interests on Kyadondo Block 182.
At the center of the dispute is land that the Ministry now says forms part of Plot 24, but which existing titleholders insist they lawfully bought, registered and developed after acquiring it from the administrator of the Block.
The dispute has taken an increasingly controversial turn after the Ministry cancelled some of the existing titles and subsequently issued new titles over portions of the disputed land, including titles in the names of people linked by complainants to one of the powerful National Resistance Movement (NRM) district treasurers and a city businessman.
The affected landowners say they are now being deprived of property for a problem they did not create — discrepancies in the official land records and what the Ministry itself has described as “unexplained land outbursts.”
The saga has also acquired a political dimension because correspondence relating to the Ministry’s handling of the disputed land was copied to former Speaker of Parliament Anita Annette Among.
But the central question remains a land one:
How did land that was already surveyed, sold, titled and occupied end up being declared part of an apparently different parcel, and who should bear the cost of correcting the anomaly?
From registered land to “ghost land”
The dispute traces back to 2022 when residents petitioned the Commissioner for Land Registration over the July 5, 2022 sale of 226.17 hectares of land by the administrator of Kyadondo Block 182 to retired Major General Elly Kayanja.
The investigation that followed uncovered what officials described as “unexplained land outbursts” of more than 292 hectares on the Block.
That finding transformed what had initially appeared to be a dispute over a land sale into a much larger question about the integrity of the Block’s land records.
According to documents relating to the dispute, the records contained serious discrepancies in acreage.
At one stage, residue land reportedly recorded as 204.17 hectares was converted into 504.51 acres and subsequently treated as 504.51 hectares.
The apparent error created an additional 300.34 hectares on paper.
That land, according to sources, was subsequently carried forward through the land records as part of the residue.
CAPTION 1: Residue land recorded as 204.17 hectares was reportedly converted into 504.51 “acres” and later treated as 504.51 “hectares”, creating an apparent 300.34-hectare discrepancy that was carried forward into subsequent residue records.
It is this alleged discrepancy that lies at the heart of the “ghost land” controversy.
The problem is that land may exist perfectly well on a registry but not physically exist on the ground.
And when such discrepancies are subsequently used to issue or cancel titles, people who bought land in good faith can suddenly find themselves owning property that the State says should never have been theirs.
That is precisely what the Bulindo titleholders say has happened.
The landowners caught in the middle
Before the current dispute escalated, residents holding registered titles on Kyadondo Block 182 say they occupied their respective parcels peacefully.
They bought the land from the administrator Jafas Mukiibi Waggumbulizi, obtained titles from the Lands Office and developed their properties.
For years, they say, there was no dispute between them and the proprietors of the Block even before Waggumbulizi became the administrator.
The problem emerged when the Ministry began investigating the apparent excess acreage in the land records.
Instead of treating the registry discrepancy as an administrative problem requiring correction, the affected owners contend that the process eventually resulted in the creation of a new physical claim over land they already occupied.
The Ministry’s position is that the disputed titles overlap Plot 24.
The titleholders, however, ask a straightforward question:
If Plot 24 already existed as an identifiable parcel, how were their respective parcels surveyed, sold, registered and developed within it?
And if Plot 24 did not previously exist on the ground in the form now claimed, when was it created?
The collapsed Kayanja transaction
The controversy was initially triggered by the sale of 226.17 hectares to retired Major General Elly Kayanja.
That transaction subsequently collapsed.
But the collapse did not resolve the underlying problem.
Instead, according to the affected landowners, attention shifted to identifying land on the ground that could correspond with Plot 24.
This is where the dispute became more complicated.
The complainants contend that some of the land subsequently identified as Plot 24 had already been subdivided, sold, titled and occupied by other people.
They argue that the process therefore did not merely correct an error in the registry.
Instead, it effectively put two competing claims over the same physical land:
The old registered titles on one side and the newly asserted Plot 24 on the other.
That is now the central battle.
The “final survey report”
On Wednesday, August 27, 2025, the then State Minister for Lands Dr. Sam Mayanja (now the Attorney General) presented what was described as a “final survey report” at the locus.
The report attributed the disputed titles to what it described as overlaps involving Plot 24, arising from “unexplained land outbursts and area amendments.”
On that basis, titles were cancelled.
But the report itself appears to have contained a significant qualification.
According to the affected parties, the team led by the Acting Commissioner for Surveys and Mapping stated that its analysis had relied on two basic documents — the Kalamazoo and cadastral maps — and recommended that additional documents, including land registry copies and land administration files, be analyzed.
That creates an obvious question:
If the report itself said more documentary evidence needed to be examined, why was it sufficient to justify cancelling existing registered titles?
The answer matters because the people losing their titles are not alleged to have created the acreage discrepancies.
They say they simply relied on documents issued by the State.
A second survey changes the dispute
The dispute did not end with the August 2025 report.
In December 2025, Dr. Mayanja authorized another resurvey. It was conducted from January 30 to March 31, 2026. The Minister completely effected the cancellation and authorized the Resident District Commissioner (RDC) Kira Municipality Naboth Kagoro, the issue of the said overlapping titles.
The exercise was reportedly undertaken on an “as-is-where-is” basis, apparently to establish the physical position of Plot 24. The exercise was purportedly carried out in the presence of sitting owners, neighbours.
But the affected titleholders question the methodology.
They allege that by the time the resurvey was undertaken, some of them had already been denied access to their land or forcibly evicted.
They further allege that the disputed land had been graded and cleared, destroying crops, structures, vegetation and survey markers that had previously helped identify the various parcels.
If those allegations are correct, the physical landscape being surveyed in early 2026 was materially different from the landscape that existed when the original purchasers acquired and developed their land.
That raises another fundamental question:
Can a resurvey accurately determine the historical boundaries of parcels after the physical evidence identifying those parcels has been removed?
The official reports reportedly state that the resurvey was conducted in the presence of sitting owners, neighbors and local council leaders.
The affected titleholders dispute whether they were adequately represented.
The Anita Among question
It is against this background that the name of former Speaker Anita Among enters the dispute.
Instructions issued by Minister Mayanja to the Resident District Commissioner of Kira Municipality concerning the resurvey and cancellation were, according to the affected parties, copied to Among.
The complainants say this is significant because the businessman, one of the beneficiaries of new titles on the disputed land, has been allegedly linked to the former Speaker as her aide.
Nor does being copied on official correspondence, by itself, establish that Among directed or influenced the Ministry’s decisions.
But the connection has nevertheless generated questions among the affected landowners about whose interests were being considered as the Ministry made decisions affecting their property.
The land dispute therefore now has two intertwined dimensions: who owns the disputed land, and whether powerful interests influenced the administrative process through which ownership was being determined.
The first question is ultimately about title and boundaries.
The second is about accountability.
The court order
There is another complication.
The affected parties point to Court Order No. 1484 of 2022, arising from Civil Suit No. 747 of 2022, which they say restrained dealings in the disputed land pending determination of the substantive case.
Yet, according to their complaints, new titles were issued over portions of the disputed land, including titles associated with a Baguma.
This raises a potentially critical legal question:
Why were new titles issued before the court dispute over the land was determined?
The answer could help establish whether the subsequent title changes were lawful administrative corrections or whether they amounted to new dealings in land that was already subject to litigation.
Who owns the land now?
The most immediate victims of the dispute are the people whose titles have been cancelled or whose land is now claimed as part of Plot 24. Some say they purchased their parcels for value.
They say the administrator sold the land, the survey system recognized the parcels, the Lands Registry issued titles and they subsequently developed the property.
They therefore argue that they had every reason to believe their ownership was secure.
The Ministry, on the other hand, appears to be relying on the argument that the titles were issued over land that did not legitimately exist in the relevant land records or that overlapped Plot 24. That leaves the country with an uncomfortable situation:
Two sets of official records appear to have been used to support competing claims over the same physical land.
One set produced titles to purchasers. Another now identifies the same territory as part of Plot 24. The dispute is therefore not simply about who has the better claim.
It is about how two apparently contradictory versions of ownership emerged from the same land administration system.
The unanswered Plot 24 questions
The affected landowners have consequently raised a series of questions about the status of Plot 24.
Why is Plot 24 reportedly absent from the administrator’s Inventory Report to the Administrator General?
How could an allegedly undivided Plot 24 contain parcels that were surveyed, sold, titled and developed?
If the land was never subdivided, how did the existing titleholders acquire their respective plots?
If it was subdivided, where are the records documenting those subdivisions?
And if the current Plot 24 boundaries were established only after the resurvey, what was the legal and physical basis for the boundaries before then?
These questions go to the heart of the dispute.
The cost of a land registry error
The Bulindo controversy exposes a broader problem with land administration.
A land title is intended to provide certainty.
A purchaser who pays for land, registers it and obtains a title should ordinarily be able to rely on the State’s records.
But where the State later discovers that the records contain unexplained acreage or boundary errors, the purchaser can become trapped between two competing realities: what the title says and what the Ministry later says the land should have been.
That is precisely why the Bulindo dispute deserves scrutiny beyond the individual parties.
If the administrator sold more land than physically existed because the registry contained inflated acreage, then the people who bought the land may have been victims of the system rather than participants in an illegality.
If officials issued titles over land that already belonged to others, responsibility for that decision must also be examined.
And if the current process creates new land on the ground by taking portions of previously titled parcels, the Ministry must explain the legal basis for doing so.
Anti-corruption investigation
The dispute has also reached the anti-corruption authorities.
In November 2025, affected residents petitioned the Commissioner for Land Registration and the Anti-Corruption Unit, copying several senior officials.
The complaints were escalated to the new State Minister for Lands Hon. Harriet Ntabazi, in July 2026. According to the complainants, they have received no substantive response from the Ministry. They have also petitioned to the Presidential Assistant for Special Duties Phiona Barungi
The State House Anti-Corruption Unit, however, reportedly investigated the matter and forwarded it to the Director of Public Prosecutions under file BULINDO DOC FILE ACU/GEF/397/24.
The complainants say they are still waiting to know what action will follow.
The DPP’s eventual position, if any, could prove significant because it may help determine whether the controversy is merely an administrative land-record problem or whether there is evidence of criminal conduct.
Ten questions at the heart of the dispute
The Bulindo controversy ultimately boils down to ten questions:
- How did the alleged 300.34-hectare discrepancy enter the land records?
- Who authorized or perpetuated the acreage changes that created the alleged “ghost land”?
- How did Plot 24 come to overlap parcels that were already surveyed, sold and titled?
- Why were existing titles cancelled on the basis of a report that recommended further analysis of land registry and administration records?
- Did the January–March 2026 resurvey establish the historical boundaries of Plot 24, or merely identify land that was physically available at the time?
- Why were new titles issued despite the alleged standing court order?
- What happens to bona fide purchasers whose titles were issued by the same Lands Office now challenging their ownership?
- Why is Plot 24 reportedly absent from the administrator’s Inventory Report to the Administrator General?
- Who benefits from the creation or recognition of Plot 24 in its current form?
- Why was correspondence concerning the resurvey and cancellation of titles copied to former Speaker Anita Among?
A dispute bigger than Bulindo
At its core, the Bulindo saga is a fight over land — but it is also a fight over the reliability of Uganda’s land records.
On one side are people who say they bought, registered and developed their land in good faith.
On the other is a Ministry determination that some of that land forms part of another parcel, Plot 24, and that the existing titles should therefore be cancelled.
Between them sits a land administration system whose own records appear to have produced conflicting acreage and ownership claims.
The critical issue now is not merely who wins the dispute.
It is how the State will establish the truth without transferring the cost of its own land-record failures to people who relied on official titles.
And as the dispute continues, the unanswered questions about Plot 24, the cancelled titles, the court order, the resurvey and the appearance of Anita Among’s name in official correspondence continue to make Bulindo one of the most contentious land disputes currently confronting the Ministry of Lands. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
