Former Soroti City West Division contestant, Calvin Echodu has been implicated in a massive land-grabbing scandal in Teso sub-region.
Echodu contested in the 2021 General Elections, losing to Jonathan Ebwalu in a poll where the former littered the city with bags of money from unclear sources to coerce voters, all in vain.
Highly placed sources have intimated to us that one of the reasons Echodu could have lost the 2021 elections despite splashing a lot of money, is because of his mouth-dripping appetite for land- an insatiable craving which left him at loggerheads with the local communities in Soroti and Teso in general.
Having grabbed huge chunks of land within Soroti and left many homeless, Echodu has now spread his distasteful antics to Katakwi District where he has connived with other people, with the aid of a UPDF General from Teso to grab 12,000 hectares of land in Okore Sub County in Ngariam County, Katakwi District, with the intent to displace over 20,000 people.
It all started as early as 2019 when one Kevin Imede claimed registered ownership of the said land and fraudulently, using the district land board and with the influence of a UPDF General acquired a land title yet the said communal land belongs to the people of Okore since time immemorial.
Kevin Imede is the mother of Calvin Echodu. Echodu has been using his mother’s name and face in all his fraudulent land dealings around Teso. Apart from his mother, Echodu, who is based in the USA, has also been fronting his NGO, Pilgrim Africa as a conduit for his dirty land dealings.
Echodu has on several occasions used his stooges to intimidate the community, saying they will all be kidnapped and hacked if they don’t vacate his land. He is said to have bribed the then chairperson of Katakwi District Land Board and other board members to write a minute which was used to process the land title.
This prompted the community of Okore Sub County through their leaders to complain to the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Lands, regarding the fraudulent survey to grab their community land.
The Permanent Secretary in her letter of 29th July 2020 advised the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), to convene a meeting with Katakwi District Land Board to generate a minute rescinding their earlier controversial minute of land allocation, thus stopping Echodu’s mother and some unscrupulous people from processing the land title for the said land.
Indeed, the District Land Board sat on 19th/11/2020 under the minute Katakwi DLB 5/11/2020 and resolved to recall the Minute for the said land allocation and the Ministry of Lands was formally given a copy of the Minute in a letter dated 20th/11/2020.
Subsequently, the Permanent Secretary on 24th/2/2021 wrote to CAO informing him of the Ministry’s decision to recall the land allocation and that the Ministry was preparing to create the Certificate of Communal Ownership for the said land.
However, using his financial muscle to the detriment of the Okore community, Echodu used the ‘backdoor’ and acquired the land title from Soroti Lands Office against the Ministry’s decision.
However, following the intervention of Ngariam leaders, the Ministry of Lands subsequently issued a letter canceling the same land title saying it was fraudulently acquired.
Since then, Kevin Imede and his son, Echodu have been in court over the cancellation of the title and recently their lawyers, Jambo & Co. Advocates acquired a caveat emptor stopping people from accessing the said land.
Echodu, the Serial Land Grabber
Echodu is not new to land grabbing. Recently, he deceitfully acquired Soroti Municipal SS, a government school which has been turned into a private school. This is a matter that Soroti City Council has appealed to the Ministry of Education and Sports to investigate.
Echodu’s name is prominent in the Soroti Golf Course land scandal where he claims to have signed a memorandum of understanding with Soroti Golf Club Limited in 2008, an MOU which is non-existent and non-bidding. In June 2023, he forcefully erected a structure on the golf course land but was demolished by Soroti City Council.
As if he will be buried with land, Echodu also hoodwinked President Yoweri Museveni and grabbed UBC land in Dakabela County, Soroti District. He had also hoodwinked the late Bishop Geresom Ilukor to give him land where Soroti University currently sits. It took the intervention of the local leaders to ensure he forcefully handed over the land title to the University.
The operations of Pilgrim Africa were recently brought to the attention of the State House Anti-Corruption which investigated the NGO and its directors and the findings indeed pinned them on land grabbing. Echodu’s address in terms of employment remains mysterious yet he boasts of being a billion.
