All the pastoralists intending to buy or hire land in the district will be required to first register with area leaders and be assessed by the security structures at the village, sub-county and the district level. All transactions involving pastoralists who are not registered will be nullified.
Gulu district
security committee has suspended all land transactions to the nomadic pastoralists unless they are registered and
vetted.
All the pastoralists
intending to buy or hire land in the district will be required to first
register with area leaders and be assessed by the security structures at
the village,
sub-county and the district level. All transactions involving
pastoralists who are not registered will be nullified.
Gulu Resident District Commissioner
Stephen Odong
Latek says that the unregulated sale of land to pastoralists have become a security threat to the community because
some unscrupulous people end up selling land that they don’t own to defraud the
pastoralists causing unrest among families.
//Cue in; “From security...
Cue out…a security problem.”//
Latek further pointed out that intelligence
reports gathered by the committee reveal that some of the pastoralists seeking
grazing land are not Ugandan citizens, and are a threat to security.
//Cue in; “The directive is...
Cue out…to our country.”//
Bungatira Sub-County Councilor
Billington Olweny P’Ongwech observed that the directive was long overdue,
adding that several of the pastoralists have infiltrated the community, and lured
them into cheap land sales.
However,
David Ngole, the former Palaro Sub-County Chairperson called for
intensive community sensitization to enable landowners to lease or hire
their land but not to sale factoring in the demand for land in future
due to population explosion.
Local
leaders say that hundreds of the pastoralists,
most of whom transport animals in trucks at night are grazing thousands
of cattle in their gardens and threatening food security. Hundreds of
pastoralists with cattle transported from Kyankwanzi District have in
recent weeks been intercepted in
Pader, Kitgum and Amuru Districts without a clear destination.
In
November 2020, President Yoweri Museveni directed
police backed by the military to ensure that pastoralists seeking to
graze in the Acholi sub-region procure land and fence it to restrict
animals from encroaching on
gardens.
