Total Chaos As Fallen IGP Erinayo's Family Files Trespass Case, Seeking Energy Ministry Engineers' Arrest Over Nwoya Land Deprivation

This news website has established that Police CID's D/ASP Collins Turyakira, based at Central Police Station (CPS) of Nwoya district, has opened up several criminal investigations cases implicating Energy Ministry engineers working on the rural electrification program in that part of Acholi.

The CID investigations, separately corroborated in greater detail by the Erinayo family lawyers in a separate letter or brief written to the Energy Ministry PS Irene Batebe and also copied to her boss Ruth Nankabirwa and the Attorney General Kiwanuka Kiryowa, are in response to numerous complaints that the vastly marginalized fallen IGP's family and estate beneficiaries have been filing almost every month. In some instances, they have directly implicated veteran UPDF Gen Otema Awanyi as one of those fermenting their family's land deprivation-related aggrievement.

Gen Otema, renowned for taking no prisoners and generally overlooking the weak is his pursuit of personal selfish interests in much of Acholi sub region, happens to be an equally powerful neighbor in the same Nwoya district where the Erinayos own vast tracts of land. In the Tangi neighbourhood alone, the Erinayo family owns up to more than 6,400 acres of arable land, according to their lawyer's letter to the Energy Ministry. 

In the investigations being conducted by the Police's CID, whose operatives require backup from their Kampala headquarters to be able to overcome the powerful actors tormenting the fallen IGP's family, the Erinayos for the start want two Energy Ministry engineers (namely Aron Lagu and Etyang) criminally prosecuted for enabling the ongoing trespass onto their land in Nwoya district where their large scale commercial agriculture activities are currently being constrained.

Represented by UK-based William Oryema and the relentless Nancy Wilson Oryema, the fallen IGP's family claim that the criminal trespass on their land has cost the family a fortune as the Energy Ministry struggles to extend power lines from Karuma exclusively to Gen Otema's 14 households located in Nwoya district's Tangi village. 

The family claims that in a bid to deliver or extend electricity for the exclusive enjoyment of people living in Gen Otema's homes in Tangi village, the Energy Ministry engineers (closely working with the contracted rural electrification Chinese company CICO) inevitably passed power lines through the Erinayo estate land. That this has since enlarged to cover up to 7kms, a huge chunk which the family has subsequently been deprived of. 

The two fearless Oryema siblings are specifically aggrieved that all this land has criminally been taken away from their Erinayo estate without the relevant valuation and compensation payment being undertaken as is mandatorily required under the laws of Uganda and more so the Constitution under Article 26. They want the Energy Ministry officials concerned with the rural electrification program concerned with the Nwoya intervention to be criminally prosecuted for allegedly conniving to deprive the family of their land without the same being preceded with mandatory compensation. 

In a brief media interview this Wednesday evening, Nancy Oryema implored the President and the State House Anti-Corruption Unit (SHACU) or even Parliament to quickly intervene and enforce equity and inclusiveness while rejecting the wisdom in the Energy Ministry's decision to expend so much money extending rural electrification benefits to that part of Nwoya only for the benefit of the Otema family members with homes in Tangi village. 

"This is simply unacceptable. They have cut down our indigenous trees and generally degraded our land without paying any compensation yet the rural electrification intervention being extended is purposed at benefiting only the Otema brothers," Nancy Oryema, combative as always, asserted in the Wednesday media interview conducted at the locus in Nwoya. She vowed to go down fighting as opposed to surrendering or merely looking on as her late father's hard-earned property is being grabbed and encroached upon in connivance knowingly involving Energy Ministry officials who ought to be there for and serve all Ugandans equally.