By Mulengera Reporters
In his capacity as Chairman of the Parliamentary Sacco Board, Buvuma County MP Robert Migadde who is also the minister for Fisheries, has had to explain himself in writing. This is in response to a red flag-raising letter that in March was written by former Budadiri West MP Nathan Nandala Mafabi, claiming fraudulent transactions and false accounting.
Nandala Mafabi was concerned about the status of 100 acres of Sacco land in Mpigi’s Kiringente Sub County in Amelia Kyambadde’s Mawokota North. The land was compulsorily acquired by the Defense Ministry which established a barracks on the same.
The exact location is called Namwabula village, which is along Mityana road, branching off at the Zimula Mugwanya statue. KCCA had tried to get alternative garbage dumping site in the same area after the Kitezi disaster but the land acquisition process didn’t materialize.
Under pressure from former Speaker Anita Among who personally chaired the session and some leaders at both the Finance and Defense Ministries, members of the 11th Parliament mid last year expeditiously approved a government loan, a small fraction of which was meant to facilitate the Defense Ministry to pay up for the 258 acres of land that had in 2022 been taken over under compulsory acquisition, ostensibly for the establishment of the barracks in that part of Mpigi, which isn’t very from the GoU/Energy Ministry’s Oil Storage Terminal in the Bujuko neighborhood.
In total, the defense Ministry, whose technocrats were under intense pressure from Parliament as MPs led by Sarah Opendi protested what they called grabbing of Parliamentary Sacco land, was allocated Shs33bn for that item. Nandala Mafabi and like-minded Sacco members were unhappy over the fact that only Shs10.5bn ended up coming to the Sacco coffers.
In his March 2026 petition, Nandala Mafabi demanded that Robert Migadde explains the discrepancy while being candid and revealing who exactly pocketed the other balance of Shs22.5bn which never came to the Sacco coffers.
In his explanation, which Nandala-like minded Sacco members rejected as unsatisfactory, Migadde asserted that there was a land owner (Ssese Habitant Resort Ltd) to whom the money from defense (the entire Shs33bn) was paid because he/she is the one who had the title for the entire piece of land (258 acres) which the defense Ministry had hijacked and taken over under compulsory acquisition.
It was done this way allegedly for the convenience of the defense Ministry whose officials at their Pastel Building-based Military Land Board (headed by Gen Joram Mugume and lawyer Deo Kizito) preferred dealing with the owner in whose names the entire land title (relating to the 258 acres) was registered as of that time. That is how the entire sum was paid to Ssese Habitant Resort Ltd, the original owners of the entire square mile from which the Parliament Sacco’s 100 acres had been demarcated.
According to Migadde this is why the Shs33bn was paid by the defense Ministry to the bank account of Ssese Habitant Resort Ltd and not directly to the Parliament Sacco’s account. It was then that Ssese Habitant Resort Ltd passed on the Shs10.5bn which was due to the Sacco. The Nandala-like minded MPs have continued to reject that explanation because their view is that there is also need to explain why the Shs33bn wasn’t first paid to the Parliamentary Sacco bank account in Cairo Bank from where Ssese’s Shs22.5bn would be passed on to Ssese.
Convinced that this could be one of the many things Methods Muhanuka Mureebe (the founding CEO who has headed the Shs86bn assets worth Sacco since the days of Speaker Ssekandi) is being investigated by the IGG at whose instigation he was arrested on Wednesday and subsequently remanded to Luzira prison along with the famous Chris Obore.
The aggrieved MPs, some of whom have since been accused of leveraging on the same to create more accountability problems for the former Speaker, are also demanding broadened investigations so that even some of the complicit officials at other entities of government, such as the Solicitor General’s chambers, get their conduct and possible complicity inquired into. As the Chairman Parliamentary Sacco where he is deputized by Kumi County MP Sailas Aagon, Robert Migadde Ndugwa has maintained that there was no wilfull wrongdoing on the Sacco leadership’s part.
Some IGG officials have also questioned the valuation of the land with many demanding to inquire into the propriety of the GoU/Defense Ministry parting with a whopping Shs33bn to just get 258 acres of land in a rural area like Kiringente in Mpigi district which isn’t even part of the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area.
Some officials close to the investigations want to inquire into the extent to which acquisition of such land was indeed an emergency for the defense Ministry to justify the impugned compulsory land acquisition, which the Parliamentary leadership used as justification to prioritize the inclusion of the Shs33bn to be part of the loan MPs were stampeded into quickly approving on the eve of the commencement of the new Financial Year. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
