President Yoweri Museveni is set to meet Acholi Parliamentary Group [APG] leaders, APG’s Vice Chairperson Lilly Adong has said.
APG is made up of members of parliament from the eight districts in the Acholi sub region.
According to Ms Adong, the invitation was sent by the president through the Deputy Speaker of Parliament also Omoro County MP Mr Jacob Oulanyah.
Ms Adong said Oulanyah relayed the information to APG members early this month.
Ms Adong who is the Nwoya woman Member of Parliament said agenda of the meeting was not divulged to APG members.
“We still don’t know why the president has called us or what he is going to discuss with the APG members. We have also not yet been told of the venue of the meeting,” Ms Adong told Acholi Times in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
Senior Presidential Press Secretary Mr Don Wanyama when contacted in a telephone Interview declined to give details of the meeting saying it was still too early.
However sources privy to previous meetings the president has held with a section of Acholi leaders say the February 1 meeting will majorly focus on the failed establishment of the Madhvani Sugar factory on a 40,000 hectares land in Lakang village, Amuru district.
Acholi Times also understands that top at the apex of the meeting are the controversies surrounding the 5,000 hectares Aswa ranch in Pader district which at the moment has more than 1,000 cattle whose ownership is unclear.
According to Kilak South MP Gilbert Olanya who also doubles as the APG Secretary General, other issues expected to be discussed will be compensation of Acholi war debt claimants and victims of the 1986 Namukora massacre.
The case of Amuru land
Contention over Lakanag land has been raging since 2006 when the Madhvani Group of Companies proposed to secure 40,000 hectares of land for sugar plantation through the backing of the government.
The President over the years has been bitter over the stalled Madhvani sugar factory project and at one point labeled Amuru leaders as rebellious agents of anti-development.
President tasked
Mr Oulanyah over the weekend while speaking at the thanks giving ceremony for the late former Ugandan president Gen Tito Okello Lutwa in Namukora sub county Kitgum district tasked president Museveni to delve into some of the investment projects in the region.
“Mr President, people are suspicious of some investment coming to the region, something needs to be reorganized for the case of Amuru district over the Sugar factory because in the same district a sugar factory has been set but another stalled for many years,” Mr Oulanyah said.
The Deputy Speaker also tasked the president to investigate matters surrounding Aswa ranch saying, “When people come and start doing things on land and people don’t understand it, it raises eyebrows,”
On Wednesday, a section of Acholi leaders comprising of Aruu North Member of Parliament Lucy Achiro and five other district Chairpersons from the region where briefly stopped from accessing Aswa ranch where they had gone on a fact finding mission.
In 2013, a president Museveni initiated meeting with Acholi leaders to break deadlock over proposed Madhvani Sugar plant ended with some Acholi leaders continuing to oppose the project.
3 Comments
Acholi land unlike other lands is not for any Government to take and give to a “bloody” indian who bankrolled the NRM war and later the holocaust in Acholiland. Madhvani, please remember Amin and the fact that you cannot hide in this majority, indigenously BLACK land. Remember we have hands and the world is liberating itself from exploiters. Run you factories but NO free land in Africa for you through your daughter (Formerly Ambassador to India) to import indians enmass to populate. I travelled through Entebbe in 2009-2013 and every time I saw hundreds of Indians streaming through a fast track immigration line – in fact there is a tall fat Indian who does pre-clearance before the Immigration window. Turns your stomach. ARE WE INDEPENDENT YET or should we invite the British back, after all what is the difference now.
Unless the president accepts that Uganda is a land of tribes who necessarily do not like each other and that he is setting the country up for a very dangerous ethnic cleansing. Today you have the guns tomorrow you may not. Some tribes have very LONG MEMORIES!!
Agenda one :LAY OFF ACHOLI LAND. Mr President, just like you will not find an Acholi owning land in Ankole, so shall it be in Acholiland. The Acholi are happy with the balance between fallow land and farmed land (shifting agric. better than monoculture cultivation), We do not want farming for GASOHOL (crops grown to produce petrol not to feed people*famin coming*). Never trust a liar wgo never kept his word to Gen Lutwa (Nairobi Agreement)
Mr President, your professor at Dar University wrote a book ” How Europe underdeveloped Africa” by Dr Walter Rodney. Have you read it. Now replace Europe with India, How many Indians are in Eastern Africa, Zimbabwe, Durban Natal. And you stand in awe at the rapid development of India. Monies siphoned from Africa and Britain, just like the europeans did, has provided India with the capital to industrialize. Can you Mr President, be accorded the same soft favours in India like you are extending the Indians (Like Madhvanis & co free land and state assets). In fact you would belong among the untouchables, the lowest of the low on account of racist Hindu religion. Will you eventually consider granting a “tribal” status for indians in Uganda like India’s Prime Minister Modi shamelessly suggested in Kenya while addressing University of Nairobi students, If you do I hope you give them Rwakitura. “Dongo wang ogwal cero…”