By JULIUS BARIGABA

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Uganda's government is in a legal tussle with 112 landowners who are set to be displaced by the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) as low-value payment, absentee landlords and a complex landownership system in some parts of the country delay compensation, causing a headache to the project developers.

Because of this, a Ugandan court will on September 16, 2024, hear a case in which the government has sued 80 people, seeking to evict them from their land in three districts within the Greater Masaka region on the route of the Eacop, whose developers are racing against time to meet the timelines set for the country’s first oil exports next year. 

This week, two similar cases were also heard featuring landowners in Hoima and Kyankwanzi districts, which are part of the 296km Eacop stretch in Uganda, where at least 32 absentee landowners and others who rejected low-value compensation pose significant delays. 

Read: Court orders 42 Ugandan families evicted to make way for oil project

Energy Minister Ruth Nankabirwa, while addressing the media in Kampala last month, acknowledged the 112 cases “under consideration for compulsory land acquisition due to issues such as untraceable individuals, landowner disputes, refusal of compensation offers, and lack of legal title.” 

Eacop officials told The EastAfrican that the project is entering a critical stage to start laying the pipeline, with early civil works almost complete.  

Works on the 12 main camp persons yards (MCPYs) and six pump stations are ongoing, while the coating plant in Tanzania was commissioned in March, and 700km of line pipe has already delivered in Tanzania.

“Early civil works are ongoing in both Uganda and Tanzania,” Ms Nankabirwa said.

“In Uganda, work has been completed at three of the five MCPYs located in Hoima, Kakumiro, and Sembabule districts, while work continues at the MCPYs in Mubende and Kyotera districts.”

Stella Amony, communication lead at Eacop Ltd, the special purpose vehicle that is managing operations of the $5 billion project, said the first consignment of coated pipe “is to arrive in Uganda this month.” 

But the pace of clearing the 1,443km Eacop route has been slower and dispute-ridden on the Uganda side, which is the shorter strict of the corridor, with only 96 percent of project-affected persons (PAPs) in the country having received compensation, compared with 99 percent in Tanzania.

The pipeline corridor spans 2,740 acres across 296km in Uganda, with 3,660 PAPs, while in Tanzania, it covers 10,081 acres across a distance of 1,147km, with 9904 persons eligible for compensation.

As the hearing of these lawsuits seeking to evict the landowners kicks off, some of the affected people who were sued for lacking a legal standing or a representative to process their families’ compensation have blamed their woes on NewPlan, the firm that was hired to implement the Eacop resettlement action plan.

Sarah Namatovu, for instance, says her family was sued for lacking a legal representative or letters of administration to the estate after the rightful landowner died, and this required processing of a death certificate, which the resettlement action plan contractor promised to pursue.

“NewPlan came to our home in 2018 and informed us that the death certificate we have was not fit for purpose. This is because the certificate was not issued by the National Identification and Registration Authority,” she explained.

 “NewPlan promised to support us to acquire the right death certificate so that we could process letters of administration and get compensation, but they never did. The next thing we heard is that we had been sued because we rejected compensation, yet we did not.”

Activists say the majority of the landowners are women, the elderly, and persons with disabilities, who could become homeless if the courts grant the government’s prayers to evict the PAPs, with the government to blame for their failure to receive compensation arising from a complex land tenure system in parts of Uganda.

Read: Uganda court orders demolition of homes to pave way for Tilenga project

For instance, Peter Arinaitwe, a lawyer who represents some of the affected people in court, explained that government years ago directed the Administrator-General to stop issuing certificates of no objection and letters of administration for estates under Buganda Kingdom.

“The affected estates are those under the Succession Register in Buganda Kingdom. Matters relating to those estates are supposed to be administered by the kingdom,” he said, adding that because of that directive, it has been difficult for some people in Buganda to obtain certificates of no objection from the office of the Administrator-General to process letters of administration.

According to minister Nankabirwa, the government proposes to deposit the landowners’ compensation in court, pending the processing of legal documents that would facilitate access to their money.

It is understood that most of the people affected by the Eacop lawsuits fall under this category, and their lawyer argues that even if their compensation is deposited with the court, the families will not access it without letters of administration.

“If affected people cannot access their compensation, yet the Uganda Constitution of 1995 says that government cannot take possession of citizens’ property before compensation, then the government will legally and morally have no right to use the land taken from the families without compensation,” said Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance.