Why is Ogenga Otunnu in the news?

A couple of weeks ago news started seeping through to the long-suffering people of Pinyluo Acoli fresh from fighting the government over Apaa land and having scored two minor victories; one in court and another getting Museveni to postpone the eviction of Acoli from Apaa, these people of Pinyluo Acoli received news that one of their sons bearing an illustrious name and adorned with a Professors title and the support of Museveni’s State House was going around in the villages trying to get clan heads to sign dubious papers with the intention of getting them to give away land to the tune of 150000 acres. 

That is equal to 607.028 km². For reference, the whole of Kampala is only 189 km². The good Professor is so to say hell-bent on giving away Pinyluo Acoli land 3,2 times the size of Kampala to unknown investors.

The above information alone, one doesn’t have to read Ogenga’s project plan, just the size of the land to be given away, it doesn’t matter what it is going to be used for or what the financial returns will be. 

Giving away land of that size to foreigners is a NO! NO! Just the social consequences should scare right-thinking Joluo out of their wits. Giving away land of that size would have the result that the investors after acquiring the land will embark on bringing in a new population to work on their investments. The unskilled Acoli population would not be a priority for employment on those investments.

Why train an Acoli tractor driver when you can get a trained one from Southern Uganda? Why train an Acoli storeman when Southern Uganda is teeming with unemployed storemen? This is not conjecture, it has already happened in Atiak where Kikuyu from Nakuru can be found driving combine harvesters in Pinyluo Acoli.

The investors will import tens of thousands of these migrant workers, all men, who will have economic purchasing power tens of times higher than the impoverished surrounding locals. Using that purchasing power they will embark on wooing and impregnating any girls they can find and then their mothers and people’s wives.

The upheaval that will follow will be gargantuan. It would be the beginning of the extinction of the Acoli we know.

Has the social aspect crossed Ogenga’s mind? The dire repercussions? I bet not.

Nations don’t give their land to foreigners like that. Land is not something you give away for fifteen years and get back like a hoe. Land is like a husband or a wife. It should not be possible for a man to tell another man, – I see you are so poor, let me take over your home with your wife and children in it.

You will get them back after a few years when I will have renovated the house, educated your children and given your wife a business. And yet this is in essence what Ogenga is proposing to the people of Pinyluo Acoli.

Ogenga Otunnu’s proposal should be rejected with contempt.