Nine people including university students were taken into police custody for staging a protest in support of the resolution by the European Union calling for the suspension of the East African Crude Oil pipeline-EACOP project on the 4th day of October 2022.
The affected students were mainly student leaders from Makerere, Kyambogo, and Makerere University Business School-MUBS. They took to the streets on Tuesday dressed in their university gowns armed with placards and banners calling on the government to halt the oil pipeline project.
Police intercepted the protesters around Kingdom Kampala Building on their way to the EU offices at Crested Towers where they expected to hand over a petition compelling the government to halt the EACOP project. In their petition, the protesters demanded that the EACOP project be stopped until certain safeguards were implemented by the government to stop human rights violations.
John Solomon Nabuyanda, one of the protesters, said the East African crude oil extraction contract that had been signed between the Ugandan government and the oil company was marred with irregularities, the reason why it had been hidden from the public.
“There was no member of parliament or minister with a full understanding of what was in that agreement. There was public anxiety about this project. We wanted to know how many people had been compensated or displaced from their land, and the safety of Ugandans who would be working there. But you couldn’t get that information”. Nabuyanda said.
The fight against EACOP continues