APG disunity affecting fight against land grabbers

ACHOLI – The apparent disunity between members of the Acholi Parliamentary Group (APG) is jeopardizing efforts to address land grabbing in the sub-region, Norbert Mao, the President General of the Democratic Party-DP has said.

For example; currently there is an undeniable disagreement between the Chairperson, Anthony Akol and Gilbert Olanya, the former Secretary of the group with the former accusing the latter of failing to hand over tools of work and infighting which affects the group and the sub-region at large.

Mao said, disunity has negatively affected the fight against land grabbers as well as following up government promises to the people of Acholi.

Mao identified some of the land rights abuse and grabbing cases as, 10 square miles of land which was surveyed under the protection of the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) in Got Apwoyo, Nwoya district which now is being occupied by a handful of government officials. Another 46,000 hectares of land in Aswa ranch with unclear ownership and suspicious land takeover, the compensation of land used for the establishment and hosting of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) among others.

“The threats to land especially in the Acholi sub-region has been eminent with several approaches to grab land from the sub region. If our leaders don’t unite, we are going to continue losing to the few greedy rich people who come and brainwash the community,” Mao said.

Mao further said, while in Parliament under the leadership of Livingston Okello Okello, they defended the land and rejected any suspicious programs which targeted land in Acholi because they were united unlike the current leadership which seems scattered.

“During our time, we united and fought all agendas that we deemed a threat to our community, looking at Apaa where we refused for Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) to gazette the area as a game reserve before it became part of Adjumani. One would wonder why they first came to Gulu, Aswa ranch, Lipan, Got Apwoyo, the food security’s first program of 2005. They wanted our people to remain in the camps and each person to get 2 acres; one would wonder where the remaining chunks of land would go, all these were things we fought because we were united,” said Mao.

“Now when you look at the current Apaa issue, every leader wants to be seen to be at the forefront instead of uniting. We have investors abusing land rights in Nwoya, Amuru, and other districts, yet our leaders seem disjointed in their approach,” Mao noted.

According to Mao, for the evil plans and demand for land in Acholi to be fought and won, all leaders regardless of position, serving or retired, the religious, cultural and other stakeholders should unite and network.

Mao observed that as a result of the disunity of the top leaders, the community members have continued to miss out on key social services which they have rights to, businesses affected, like in the contested Apaa where businesses, farming activities among others are normally affected during attacks.

But when contacted, Anthony Akol the Chairperson of the Acholi Parliamentary Group noted that there was no fight but rather disagreement in opinion.

According to Akol, their issue with his Kilak South counterpart is purely electoral with Olanya thinking that the current LCV Chairperson Amuru, Michael Lakony is being fronted against him which is totally untrue. These allegations, Olanya denied saying they were untrue and baseless.

At the beginning of the current political term, all the leaders in Acholi were invited for a meeting at Gulu Archdiocese where unity was emphasized for the development of the political leaders.

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