By Phillip Corry

UGANDA Lawn Tennis Association (ULTA) has been thrown out of the Lugogo tennis centre by sports governing body NCS.

Court bailiffs stormed the centre on Saturday and stopped ULTA from any activity at the premises as the long standing battle over ownership and dues of the tennis facility with NCS took a dramatic twist.

“Lugogo Tennis Club has been running this place for the last 20 years while ULTA has been doing it for two years. But they have failed to pay rent arrears to nCS so we had to take action,” Jasper Aligawesa, the general secretary of the sports authority said.

“They don’t own the place and on top of that they have been getting money from the rugby union, there is a shop, a restaurant, bar and their tennis courts to hire and have failed to pay rent to NCS,” according to aligawesa, The ULTA is supposed to be paying sh2m in rent to national Council of Sports.

A defiant ULTA chairman John Nagenda shot back saying that: “NCS had no control of the centre.”

ULTA has sent a letter to the minister of sports to intervene in this case and have also copied it to aligawesa and the chairman of the council, Anthony Katamba.

“I don’t believe that they are in charge of this facility,” Nagenda said over the phone.

“I strongly believe that NCS general secretary is behind this move and we are not happy with the way he has acted” according to Nagenda, President Museveni’s media advisor, the association received “unreasonable and unconstitutional conditions” by the sports council that he could not reveal over the phone.

“If this case is not resolved we shall take it to a higher level by using the head of business in this country,” Nagenda said.

“It’s a strange way to running sports and we find it very irregular.”