It is now five years since city businessman Hamis Kiggundu assumed full responsibility of revamping Nakivubo sports facility and days are numbered for sports lovers to start jubilating.
The refurbishing is said to be as a result of the private partnership between the trustees of the facility and the pragmatic city businessman Kiggundu, who is reported to be among Uganda’s richest people, with an estimated net worth of $ 870 million according to the Forbes Magazine.
Kiggundu famously known as Ham believes the mega arena will not just be a stadium in the heart of Kampala but will also leave an un erasable legacy in the development of the sports industry in Uganda.
“The stadium project equally makes business sense with incomes since it has commercial premises attached and from a realistic and a reasonable point of view, this is not just a stadium but a legacy and clear illustration to all Ugandans that if Uganda is to develop, its our responsibility as Ugandans to develop the motherland,” said Ham.
The enigmatic businessman contracted Roko Construction Firm which steadily begun works on the stadium in early 2017, and the onsite engineer Ivan Sewankambo told the press in early 2021 that almost 70% of the construction was complete, including the VIP pavilion.
The city tycoon had been under terrible criticisms for deliberately delaying the reconstruction of the stadium in favor of developing his shopping malls. These allegations were however refuted by Mr. Sewankambo who said works had been deadlocked by several setbacks including the structural review, which stalled for almost a year.
He also said that several chocking Covid-19 inspired lockdowns greatly hampered operations as several workers found it hard to access the site, which inspired the contractor to suspend works for almost half a year.
Now that the country is in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic , Ugandans especially sports lovers will enjoy the magnificent stadium, built on international standards to envelope modern sports facilities like a tennis court, swimming pools and basket ball arenas in addition to body building parlours and saunas.
The UGX. 54 billion state-of-the art stadium will also envelope a football playground, a two-level pavilion, netball grounds, two suspended floors and the roof top with provisions for evacuating people to safety in case of danger in the stadium since it is surrounded by arcades and shopping malls. This will create an impressive ecosystem in which the stadium and the community in which it is situated predate on each other.
Important still, these impressive refurbishings will give Uganda’s War Memorial Stadium an extensive and impressive facelift on top of revolutionalizing the country’s sports sector, amidst relentless demands for modern sports facilities by citizens.
The stadium is also built to have a sitting capacity of 35,000 spectators with three entrances to the gate. These include one that will ply the facility from Ssebana Kizito Road and two gates along Kafumbe-Mukasa road above other emergency exits.
Kiggundu’s prime aim is to exert considerable ground-breaking creative efforts, excellent technical know-how that will enable the stadium meet standards set by Federation of International Football Association (FIFA), on top of being the top sports facility on the African continent.
It also houses facilities to cater for people with disabilities (PWDs) and multi-level parking facilities to envelope about thousands of cars, with the pitch 1.5m higher than the Kafumbe-Mukasa road, and 3.5m lower than Ssebana Kizito road to mitigate impacts of flooding.
The pitch also presents four zones for different categories of people including the Very Important Persons (VIPs), among others.
Initially, the redevelopment of this project had been blocked by several city tycoons who claimed the deal was illegally awarded to Ham, but later on backed off after learning that then Kampala Minister Hon. Betty Kamya had issued on order permitting Kiggundu to revamp the facility.
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