Maverick State Minister in charge of lands in the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Dr Sam Mayanja has confirmed to Ono Bwino that he received a life-threatening letter from Dr Apollo Kaggwa Lutakome a retired consultant at Bank of Uganda.
In the letter, Dr Mayanja claims that Dr Kaggwa told him not be tempted to step on his 235 hectares situated at Kakunyu/ Nsekwa, Namusera village, Mende Subcounty in Wakiso if he still values his life.
“He was clear in his letter, that before going for a public hearing on the land, I should first buy a coffin in which I will be buried in. He assured me that he has also bought his and he is ready for the fight on the ground,” Minister Mayanja said,
He revealed that when he shared the said letter with his security detail, he was advised to postpone the gathering as intelligence verifies the danger the letter poses in one-month period.
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Mayanja disclosed that because he received the assignment from President Museveni to handle the matter, he realised that taking security advise of postponing the gathering was going to look like a cowardly act before his boss who is also the Commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
He divulged that he decided to brief the president, and he immediately directed that his security should be beefed up with specialised commandos after assuring him that nothing was going to happen to him.
He advised him not to postpone the meeting with the local people who are suffering because of Dr Kaggwa’s alleged impunity.
After a private meeting with the president, Mayanja contacted Wakiso District Resident Commissioner (RDC) Justine Mbabazi to proceed with the organization of the meeting and shared with her the contacts of the commander of the commandos the president assigned to be in charge of his security.
“I went to the ground and I read the directives of the court that allowed the tenants to enjoy their pieces of land. shockingly the man who was threatening me with his men were nowhere to be seen. I’m told that now he is in corridors of court fighting to reverse the earlier decision of the court, but good enough the president is following everything that is going on, on that Kakunyu land,” Mayanja said.
Efforts to get a comment from Dr Kaggwa a former friend to minister Mayanja over the allegations made against him were futile since his known phone number was not going through at the press time.
This is not the first time that the life of Minister Mayanja a seasoned land law giant and a founding partner at the famous Kampala Associated Advocates (KAA) is being targeted and threatened.
When he was solving a land grievance in Bunyoro between a powerful landlord and his tenants, bullets were fired by a private security guard of the landlord and Mayanja was shielded by his commandos in the middle of the bush.
A number of lawsuits have been filed against Mayanja both in his personal and official capacity.
He told Ono Bwino that its fraudsters in land businesses who are using guns and power influence to grab poor people’s land who think that suing him will threaten him into surrendering the assignment his boss Museveni gave him to save innocent poor people from being evicted from their land.
It should be remembered that months after being appointed a minister, his 23-year-old daughter a one Belinda Birungi was killed in a controversial car accident in Kampala as she was preparing to travel abroad for further education.
It should be remembered that former lands minister Aida Nataba revealed that mafias in land business were behind her attempted assassination in 2019 when she was driving on Kampala-Kayunga Road.
She narrated how she received life-threatening messages to stop intervening in saving tenants who were threatened with eviction.
When she insisted on the job, they filed several lawsuits targeting her as a person which led to her spending a lot of her money and ended up being bankrupt.
Justice Catherine Bamugemereire also survived assassination when she was chairing a Commission of Inquiry into land matters while she was on locus visit to the contested land in Mutungo, Nakawa Division Kampala city.
