Kampala — THE Islamic University in Uganda has gone to court to block the cancellation of their land allocation at Nakawa housing estate by the Government.

The acting commissioner for land registration, Sarah Kulata, last month wrote to the university, informing them about a decision to cancel their land title for the land on grounds that it was issued in error.

"This office has received communication to effect that the allocation of the Nakawa land to you was done in error since the land was already earmarked for another project. The land was, therefore, not free and available for titling to you," reads the October 27 letter.

Accordingly, Kulata asked the university to return the duplicate of the title to the ministry.

The Government argues that the university was allocated more land than it was supposed to get.

According to the Attorney General, only 2.5 acres was approved, yet the university got 10 acres. The remaining 8 acres, he said, were part of the land allocated to the developer of the Nakawa/Naguru estates, OpecPrime Properties, which signed a public private partnership agreement with the Government in October 2007.

The Attorney General found that all in all, almost 30 acres of the 138 acres of land allocated to OpecPrime Properties had been given out to smaller investors.

In his legal advice to President Yoweri Museveni on September 7, he blamed the lands ministry, headed by Omara Atubo, for wrongly issuing land titles to the smaller investors.

"It is clear that the titles to the small investors were issued in error or wrongly issued by the Ministry of Lands since the land in question was already earmarked for the Naguru/Nakawa project," his letter said.

He recommended the cancellation of all the land titles given to the small investors, including the additional 8 acres to the Islamic University.

However, after receiving the communication, the university dragged the commissioner for land registration to the High Court, seeking an injunction.

The court issued an interim order on November 12 restraining the land registrar's office from recalling the land title.

It also ordered the office of the land registrar not to make any alteration on the land.

In 2007, the Islamic University was allocated the land at Nakawa housing estate in fulfillment of a presidential pledge.

During the opening of King Fahd Plaza in 2002, Museveni promised to allocate land to the university to construct a commercial building.

Former local government minister Kahinda Otafiire in October 2006 directed the Uganda Lands Commission to supervise the issuance of the title to the university.

But in July this year, it emerged that the university was allocated four times more land of the Nakawa estate than what had been approved by the Government.