President Museveni has directed landlords to stop illegal evictions of bibanja holders.
Speaking during celebrations to mark Heroes’ Day in Gomba, the president told landlords who have collected excessive nominal rent fees (obusuulu) to return it to bibanja holders immediately or risk being arrested.
“The landlords who have been charging more than the agreed busuulu fees by the district must return it back, and if they try to evict our people, we shall arrest them. You must pay back all the money you have taken from these people and the evictions are illegal,” he said.
In 1995, a new constitution was established, and land rights were clarified, which stated that the land in Uganda belonged to its people, and reinstated private land ownership.
Museveni was however dismayed to learn that landlords have decided to ignore the agreed upon nominal fees paid by the bibanja holders on their land and are going ahead to evict them.
He asked the Resident District Commissioner-RDC for Gomba, Harriet Nakamya to record all those under threat of eviction due to the nominal fees and see how to resolve the matter with their landlords.
At the same ceremony, the Minister for Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Judith Nabakooba gave out land titles to 446 people of Kanoni, Gomba, courtesy of the government through the Land Fund.
Turning back to Heroes’ Day, Museveni revealed that NRA managed to succeed during the protracted liberation war of 1981-1986 because of its correct principles.
“What enabled us to succeed were the correct principles of the NRM because you hear that there were other groups which tried to fight but they could not manage,” he said.
“When I’m in Kampala, I normally hear even the religious people talking about the traditional religion which is very strong here but we were able to handle those people and showed them what to do. We could listen to them and also show them the way. We were able to lead these traditional people in a modern way. We told them that we can get the blessings from our ancestors but bullets can kill and we did it a modern way and the machine gunners who attacked the then government were actually from the traditional people. These people were the ones who stormed Kampala.”
He advised leaders to be patient with the people they lead and challenged Ugandans to fight poverty by embracing the NRM wealth creation message.
“Since 1995, I have been telling you how to get out of poverty and we gave you the four acre model; and if you don’t have use the one acre or whatever you have but if it’s the four acres, we said one acre is for coffee, another acre for fruits, the third acre for pasture for dairy cows, the fourth acre for food crops and in the backyard you put poultry or pigs if you are not a Muslim or traditional Munyankore and then if you are near the wetland, you do fish farming. You will get a lot of money. All these programs we have been bringing are in order to help you implement either all or some of those,” he said.
