Minister Haruna Kasolo
By Richard Kintu
The State Minister for Microfinance, Haruna Kyeyune Kasolo, is in trouble following a lawsuit against him for controversially acquiring acres of land in Rakai district.
According to the suit filed by Emmanuel Ssegwanyi vide Civil Suit No. 78 of 2024 at Masaka High Court, the minister intentionally bought land occupied by residents and also went ahead to place a caveat on it — albeit without following due diligence.
The land was originally comprised in LRV 2949 Folio 1, Kooki Block 123, Plots 9 and 10 and covers 4 villages of Kanoni, Kayunga, Mpaama, and Luteebe in Kanoni Parish, Lwanda Sub County in Rakai district.
In his counterclaim, Ssegwanyi told court that to pull his deals through, Kasolo connived with a Kyambogo University Architect and Senior Lecturer, Ssengooba Kasule; while the pair are being covered and protected by Masaka Eastern Regional Police Commander, Ezra Tugume. Ssegwanyi now wants court to set aside Kasolo’s fraudulent interests on the suit land, including a sales agreement and caveat.
Details:
According to court documents seen by this publication, Ssegwanyi avers that his squabbles with the minister began in May this year, when Kasolo, without any prior notice or contact with him, sent surveyors to survey the suit land. Led by Kisenyi Sanansio, the Minister’s local handler, the surveyors stopped and chased away Ssegwanyi’s labourers, who had been hired from Kasaali Prison in Kyotera district to clear the land at that time.
It later emerged that the Prisoners’ stoppage was done upon ‘an order-from-above phone’ to the Kasaali Prison Officer-in-Charge by the Minister.
Ssegwanyi further avers that the surveyors’ presence drew a mob of residents, who, together with him arrested the surveyors and dragged them to the nearby Lwanda Police Post on charges of criminal trespass. The standoff was however resolved amicably after the surveyors admitted their mistake and vowed never to return to the now suit property.
We have established that following the skirmish, Kasolo, who claimed to have bought the contentious land from Lecturer Ssengooba Kasule, sent his other aide, Ponsiano Kayemba, to verify Ssegwanyi’s claim to the land.
Kasolo Attempts Forced Buy
Ssegwanyi contends that after Kayemba informed his boss that Ssegwanyi was a bona fide owner of the land, the Minister— a few days later — contacted the businessman and proposed that he sell the land to him.
The pair met three times at Kasolo’s Solo Hotel in Masaka and at Sheraton Hotel, in Kamwokya and at the minister’s office in Kampala. The deal, however, collapsed after Kasolo presented unfavorable terms for the purchase.
Ssegwanyi faces Arrest threat
Having objected to selling his land to the Minister, Ssegwanyi resumed developing his land about a month later. However, he got the shock of his life when, in early June 2025, police officers led by Lwanda Police Post Officer-in-Charge came and informed him of orders from the DPC Rakai SSP Nkudizana John to arrest him on charges of criminal trespass on the land. He was however left untouched after the DPC advised against his arrest after the O.C. explained to him that Ssegwanyi was in possession of authentic court orders and sales agreements upon which he purchased the land.
The Eventual arrest
With matters seemingly escalating beyond his imagination, Ssegwanyi petitioned the Rakai RDC Sarah Kiyingi to intervene in the matter on June 13, 2025. The RDC summoned the DPC, who came and informed her that the arrest orders had been issued to him by his boss, the Greater Masaka RPC, Ezra Tugume. The DPC then suggested that he takes Ssegwanyi to Masaka to explain himself to the RPC.
To Ssegwanyi’s shock, however, when they reached the RPC’s office at around 9:00am, he found him in a meeting with Ssengooba, who quickly turned complainant in the criminal trespass case against him. Segwanyi was handed over to the Regional CID boss; who however noted that there was no case file upon which to detain the former. The RPC, however, advised Ssengooba to record a statement.
Fictitious Case File puts RPC On The Cross
Despite the lack of clear charges, Ssegwanyi was detained under ref: CRB 631/2024 of Rakai, despite his case/arrest being new and happening in 2025. Curiously, a petition about this strange case file to the Senior Resident State Attorney’s office on June 18, 2025 revealed that the said file was for a one Tumusiime Steven and had even been closed. On June 25, 2025, the RSA Wamibu Anthony called for the same file for further management.
On June 18, 2025, Ssegwanyi through his lawyers of Barnabas D.K. Dyadi & Co. Advocates, in a letter received by the IGP on June 20, 2025, also petitioned the Inspector General of Police to intervene and stop the seemingly suspicious conduct of the Masaka RPC Ezra Tugume.
In their prayers, they asked the IGP to compel the RPC to respect court judgement which declared Kateregga Lecoboam & 6 Others (the people from whom Ssegwanyi rightfully bought the suit land) as the rightful owners of the land. The judgement dispossessed Ssengooba of the same after it was passed against him. Despite these documented judgements against Ssengooba, he has continued to enjoy unwavering support from the police bosses, much to Ssegwanyi’s disadvantage.
It has emerged that this support has even caused clashes between the Police and sister security offices. For instance, we have established that on the day of Ssegwanyi’s arrest on June 13, it took the intervention of the RDC to deliver copies of land documents he had delivered to her office for him to be given bond; whose processing was completed at 9 pm.
Reports also show that with the Greater Masaka region having been split into Masaka East and West, the police leadership in Masaka East still intermeddles in the same case despite it now falling within the jurisdiction of Masaka West. It is upon such issues that Ssegwanyi, through his lawyers, wants the IGP to rein-in these top cops.
Indeed, on July 8, 2025, Innocent Ogullei, on behalf of the IGP, wrote to the Greater Masaka Region RPC to furnish the IGP with a report into this matter, specifically showing the corrective action taken.
Ssengooba Turns Perennial Litigant
By press time, we learnt from highly reliable sources that the RPC was yet to file the report as ordered by the IGP. However, it has since emerged that having gone under pressure from Minister Kasolo to refund his money, Ssengooba has resorted to becoming a prolific litigant; albeit instituting fresh cases on new and old defendants who hold customary tenancy on the suit land. Interestingly, records show that he has perennially lost cases on this same land before, with no record of any appeal against the losses.
Documents seen by this publication show that, for instance, on June 27, 2025, Ssengooba sued Ssegwaanyi Emmanuel and 7 others including Lutengula Peter to whom he lost the first case on the same land and never appealed. In his Civil Suit No. 78 of 2025, Ssengooba seeks court to order vacant possession of the suit land by the defendants on account of being trespassers on it.
The Anomalies
However, in their preliminary objection, the defendants want court to quash Ssengooba’s prayers, citing a litany of procedural irregularities and past history of the plaintiff in this same subject matter.
For instance, Ssegwanyi through his lawyers contends that Ssengooba astronomically undervalued the suit land measuring 197.8 Hectares, at only Shs1bn despite its actual valuation being over Shs3bn, with the fair value of an acre of land in the suit land’s location being over Shs7m. Consequently, by virtue of this undervaluation, Sengooba paid less filing fees to the government (of only Shs1,097,000 including fees for a temporary injunction).
But what is even more peculiar is that the filing receipt for this case lacks a Payment Registration Number (PRN) matching the filing date. We have since established that despite the case being filed on June 27, 2025, the only PRN relating to it is dated August 18, 2025; a day after Ssegwanyi complained about the glaring irregularity on August 17, 2025.
More anomalies also manifest in another suit Ssengooba filed against the now troubled man of God, Kateregga Cornelius Bakubanja. In the suit registered vide Land Civil Suit No. 203 of 2012, court dismissed the matter for non-attendance of parties.
During the proceedings, Ssengooba claimed that he had bought the land at Shs12m in 2002 from Kanoni Balunzi Kwegatta, a group of 11 farmers who had a 49-year lease starting November 1, 1999 on the land. He further claimed that all the 11 farmers who included his father, Gaster Kasule, signed on the agreement and reared animals on the said land. He added that before buying the said land, he did a physical search and established that there were no people on it.
However, Ssengooba’s claims would be contradicted when he stated that he returned to Uganda in 2004 after many years of living in Germany.
This made it impossible for him to have lived in two places at the same time in 2002. And despite claiming to have a sales agreement with 11 sellers, he never at one time provided the same to court. However, documents on court files prove otherwise.
For instance, contrary to Ssengooba’s claims, the land’s lease agreement and title deed bear only two names: Eriazali Muwonge and Sande Katende. Our investigations, however, show that the group had chosen 3 trustees including Muwonge Eliazali, Sande Matovu and Lecoboam Katende to represent them on the land documents.
Sadly, by the time the lease and title were issued on August 23, 2001 and January 8, 2002 respectively, both Matovu and Katende had died in 1989 and 1993 respectively. To the group and court’s surprise, however, the two documents came out with only two people: Eriazali Muwonge and Sande Katende, a strange and fictitious person who had never been a member of the farmers group to which Gaster Kasule, the father to Ssengooba, was member.
Queries also were raised after it emerged that the same title changed into Ssengooba Kasule’s name just a year later, on February 6, 2003, of it being issued to the farmers.
RDC Uncovers More Anomalies
And also, a report of findings compiled by Rakai District RDC Sarah Kiyimba trashed Ssengooba’s claims that by the time he bought the land it was unoccupied by people. The findings partly emanated from a June 14, 2025 locus meeting which the RDC together with the DPC convened over the suit land. The same meeting was attended by Ssegwanyi, a day after he secured police bond following his arrest by RPC Tugume upon Ssengooba’s complaint.
As per the letter dated August 12, 2025, it was established that the said land had occupants who were not members of the farmers’ group. It also emerged that when Ssengooba bought the land, he began using it alongside the other settlers. However, things only changed in 2015 when residents discovered that Ssengooba possessed a lease on the same land and wanted to evict all the other dwellers; albeit without following legal procedures. The RDC’s report also shows that the suit land holds up to 78 homesteads of about 350-400 people, with coffee, eucalyptus plantations and grazing fields.
Currently, the residents want Ssengooba to be investigated to ascertain how he acquired the contentious land under such shady conditions. They also want him to be stopped from being a hostile neighbour who releases his animals into their crops, on top of being stopped from collecting busuulu from him. This is on account that he filed to provide the sale agreement for the same land when court tasked him to do so. That he simply vanished, hence forcing the court to dismiss his own case for non-attendance of parties— ironically including himself the plaintiff.
Watch this space for more details!!
