By Mulengera Reporters
Late last year, ex-Museveni Minister Isaac Isanga Musumba (of Buzaya County in Kamuli district) spent weeks locked at Luzira prison after failing to pay his debts. Being a naturally very ambitious and risk-taking person when it comes to venturing into money-making opportunities or deals, Salaam Musumba’s husband is always choking on debts-and it’s very unlikely he can ever do without being indebted here and there.
For the October case, one of his numerous creditors called Charles Wakwale got the Commercial Division of the High Court Judge Patience Tumusiime Rubagumya to sentence Isaac Musumba to 6 months in prison after he failed or refused to pay back the 2023 loan which, as of that time, had accumulated to Shs160m.
Musumba, who currently chairs the Local Governments Financing Commission, had tried to go into hiding while deceptively telling his creditor Wakwale that he was out of the country. He only came out of Luzira after friends and family members came together and paid up the debt plus the legal costs his pursuer Wakwale had incurred.
But what is of interest for purposes of this story is how this imprisonment ordeal made Isaac Musumba to become an emotionally broken man. Sources close to him say that on the first day, Musumba broke down and cried wailing like a 5-year-old toddler the moment he was showed where he was going to be sleeping for the next 6 months. Having failed to sleep, he spent the whole night crying while calling on the Buzaya gods to come and rescue him.
“I can’t imagine the whole me, a former Minister and MP in the government of Uganda, having to sleep on this bare floor for the next 180 days. Oh God no way,” quotes one of the sources who was close to him throughout that Luzira ordeal. That Isaac Musumba kept crying throughout the night asking “Oh God what have I done to deserve all this adversity?” It took him more than a week to get used to the fact that this now was his new reality.
Sources say that one of the fellow inmates, a fellow Musoga, he found in Luzira tried to counsel and encourage him by repeatedly asserting that all would be well in the end. The prisons management had to organize a team of psychologists and counsellors to speak to Isaac Musumba to get him realize that this was after all not the end of life for him. Gratefully, the money was paid up and he got out of the prison though looking every inch a very broken man.
Yet Musumba’s woes are seemingly far from over. There are chances that he might have to be locked up once again and this time round, the creditor is none other than Dr. Shiraz Meghani, the wealthy Ugandan of Asian origin and manufacturer who owns (mattresses maker) Megha Industries among other business enterprises.
Under Execution Miscellaneous Application No. 018 of 2025, Meghani has been authorized by the High Court to do all he can to recover from Isaac Musumba including selling off his 6 acres of prime land in Jinja. And should the total obligation remain unsettled, Meghani could turn the heat on Isaac Musumba who could end up locked up once again.
The land Meghani has been authorized to sell off and recover his hard-earned cash is particularized in court records as FRV JJA694 Folio 13 Plot 496 Block 5 situated at Lubani Central Jinja measuring approximately 2.4690 hectares (6 acres). It comprises of a granite rock which is suitable for road construction activities, especially tarmacking.
It comprises of millions of metric tones of granite rock underneath. This is all well recorded in the geological report which Meghani, who is now an old man in the evening of his life, has had prepared by professionals as he looks for buyers for the land. Court has given Isaac Musumba 30 days within which to make good or face severe consequences. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
