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Uganda Prisons Service (UPS) Commissioner General Johnson Byabashaija has backed the proposal to relocate Luzira Prison.

Byabashaija made the revelations while appearing before the Parliament Committee on Human Rights to respond to the country's human rights state.

This was after Agule County Member of Parliament Polycarp Ogwari asked the officers from Prisons to clarify plans to relocate Luzira Prison to pave the way for the construction of an international hotel following two letters purportedly written by President Yoweri Museveni. 

The letters written on July 22, 2022, to the internal affairs minister Kahinda Otafiire, directed the relocation of Luzira Prison pending the construction of a five-star hotel at the current site.

Byabashaija in response noted that the prison is in the middle of the city with industries around it which no longer makes it a maximum security prison.

He added that the letters making rounds on relocation of the prison are not new given that in 2008 UPS wrote a relocation concept after reviewing the security arrangements at Luzira and the size of the land they are relocating to is bigger.

Does it make business sense?

According to Byabashaija, the relocation of Luzira Prison will have many advantages. However, he expressed reservations about the business proposal noting that relocation of the prison would require about $100m (about shillings four trillion) and wondered which businessman would make such an investment.

The proposal

Museveni’s letter, a copy of which New Vision Online has also obtained, addressed to Otafiire partly reads: “I have received a letter from Tian Tiang Group, that is proposing to develop the Luzira Prison into a five-star hotel, with a conference centre and relocate the prison at their cost to another place in the interior on land identified by Government. I support this idea”.

He, therefore, directed the minister, a retired Major General, to start negotiations with the Tian Tiang Group about this program and identify land anywhere in Uganda to relocate the prison.

Family owning Luzira land

Otafiire revealed in his letter that the family of the late Antonio Lutwama Kabogoza, who owned the land, have unfortunately never applied for letters of administration since the late passed on in 1928.

He, however, said they have agreed as a family and beneficiaries to sell the said square mile to the UPS.

In light of the current legal impasse on processing letters of administration for the old Buganda estates, the minister said the family lawyers formed an opinion that they (beneficiaries) could still sell their interest in the said land to the UPS for the prison’s relocation.

“The purpose of this letter is to invite you and the Administrator General (herein copied) to my office on the 6th March 2024 at 2:00 pm at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Boardroom for a joint meeting to review the said position of the family and whether your offices have any objection or proposals to actualize the said Presidential directive,” Otafiire told Kiwanaka and the Administrator General.