City boda boda riders camp at police after being fleeced by conmen

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT | A group of Boda Boda Riders from different parts of Kampala have been camping at Wandegeya Police station now for two weeks with some of them spending nights. Some claim police officers are protecting criminals who defrauded them. 

For some of them whom we talked to, the story started three months ago, when several companies visited their respective stages in and outside Kampala, and started registering whoever wanted to acquire a Motorcycle on a loan scheme while collecting 300,000 shs from every subscriber. 

Richard Tibamanya one of the leaders of these Boda Boda riders told URN that the companies that later turned out to be fake included one called Quick Boda Boda Limited, East Africa Boda Boda Loan and Tukole Boda Boda Loan Scheme among others. 

Tibamanya says they used stage leaderships to target over 600 victims and after collecting a good amount of money, they all disappeared. 

We talked to some of these victims who took us to one of the offices where the company that defrauded them used to operate from, and it is curiously near Wandegeya police station.

They allege that they took effort and arrested one of the managers of the company, but police released her and later started extorting money from them under the guise of continuing with the investigations.

Another leader Khamis Mutyaba who convinced a bigger number of boda boda riders to pay and join the scheme, said he is now tied up in a puzzle, as his colleagues have started looking at him as a co-conspirator in the defrauding scheme.

We then took the matter up with Kampala Metropolitan police spokesperson Patrick Onyango who is under investigation, but cautioned the boda boda riders against pushing to rush through matters of investigation. 

About the alleged manager who was arrested and released, Onyango said that they arrested the lady and detained her for two weeks, compiled a file and forwarded it to the state attorney who rejected it on grounds that she was an innocent frequent visitor to the office of the fraudsters.

Onyango denied having any knowledge about the extortion and corruption allegations raised by the Boda Boda riders, but urged them to report any such offences to the Wandegeya DPC, and if they don’t get help, he advised them to seek further support at Bukoto Police Professional Standards Unit- PSU

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