By Ian Ortega
According to Joachim Buwembo; “London si bizimbe! Uganda may celebrate a major world record soon, if one Rev. Nathan Ntege loses the 14 charges he is facing in the UK over enabling a whopping 500 foreigners get British citizenship in a span of four years by arranging bogus marriages for them. An entry in the Guinness Book of Records is guaranteed in case he is (unfortunately) found guilty.”
An article from the Daily Mail reads:
“A vicar who ran an alleged sham wedding racket was ‘fast-tracked’ because the Church of England wanted more black clergy, a court heard yesterday.
Reverend Nathan Ntege did not have training in the law surrounding marriages when he was appointed as a parish priest, his trial was told.
But officials thought he brought ‘a bit of colour to proceedings’ in the Church, a senior clergyman said.
Ntege, 55, is accused of presiding over a ‘matrimonial conveyor belt’, where migrants from outside the European Union are said to have married those with the right to remain in Britain before applying to the Home Office to stay here themselves.
The prosecution alleges that the plot was ‘an industrial-scale abuse of the system of immigration control within the UK’ but lawyers for Ntege questioned if he had been made a ‘scapegoat’ for a wider problem.
Ntege started working at St Jude’s in Thornton Heath, South London, in 2002 and became the parish vicar in 2007.
The former Archdeacon of Croydon, Vincent Davies, said vicars normally served a form of apprenticeship but that Ntege had not done so because he previously worked in a cathedral in Uganda.
He said Ntege’s lack of experience meant he struggled with rules and paperwork but added: ‘Because we were trying to appoint more black and African clergy, the bishop said it was something that we needed to take account of.’
He said: ‘One of his great benefits was that he was not Church of England background… Whereas we are considered quite grey and dull, he brought a bit of colour to proceedings, which changed things… for the better.’
He told the court Ntege, who came to the church from Uganda in 2002, had difficulties sticking to the laws in England.
‘Having been trained abroad, Ntege did not have a sure grasp of the rules of the Church of England and how it applied to a Parish Priest,; he said.
He said he challenged Ntege during a visit to the church in 2007 about the number of marriages happening there, and questioned whether the correct procedures were being carried out.
Archdeacon Davies said: ‘Ntege’s reply to me was “What I’m trying to achieve is so no-one feels they are not living outside the law of God and church, by living together without being married”.
‘He told me living in his country without being married was considered sinful, so he wanted to get as many people married as possible.
‘I said it was very commendable but it must be carried out by the law of England, not law of Uganda. I reminded him of his duties as a registrar and he could be sent to prison if he did not observe the law.
‘It is true the clergy are not immigration officers, but the priest must make every effort to ensure marriage is lawful and the procedures are observed so the marriage is not void. Not taking care of procedures means all sorts of problems can occur.’
He said he had been to the church in 2004 to check the records and found Ntege was not filling them out correctly, in that he was filling out one copy of the register instead of the two he was meant to.
He said: ‘I spent three days going through the records with him, showing him how to fill them out correctly.
‘He introduced me to his registrar, Maudlyn Riviere, and I told him she could not be the registrar because he could not delegate the registrar’s duties.
‘But apart from the hiccup with the registrar he seemed to be doing a very fine job.’
He called Ntege a ‘good friend’ and said he was a very ‘spiritual and dynamic person’, adding: ‘He was a good man and the Bishop had confidence in him.’
He added: ‘The increase in baptisms was proportional to the increase in weddings and the increase in the congregation. It became a very thriving church. It doubled in size.
‘When a church grows exponentially some administrative errors occur. We say get the marriage law right and we can help with other matters.’
Archdeacon Davies said the Diocese of Southwark and other dioceses in London had been plagued by a rise in sham marriages, leading to the Archdeacons and Bishops writing letters to warn all the priests in the Diocese of the correct procedures.
He said: ‘The practice of sham marriages was not widespread, but it happened.
‘There was a wedding between a Nigerian and a Portuguese woman of easy virtue at another church, which was stopped. There were gangs of people roaming around doing this.’
When prompted by Ntege’s defence lawyer Gelaga King, Archdeacon Davies remembered Ntege had come to him with concerns about eight marriages that he considered could be sham.
He said: ‘It led me to believe he was following the rules because he was bringing important things to my attention.’
Alexander Robb, who has been a member of the church since 1939 and had acted as church warden and vice chairman of the Parochial Parish council, also gave evidence.
He described Ntege as a man of ‘integrity and principle’ but said he favoured Ugandans and Ugandan customs at the expense of his other parishioners.
He also remarked on the number of marriages happening in the community and his surprise at their ‘remarkable increase’.
Ringleader: Rev Ntege is accused of pocketing £70,000 and sending huge sums back to his native Uganda.
Mr Robb said ‘Ntege came to the church in 2002, he had new ideas in the running of the church.
‘In the early days he asked me to be a mentor to remind me about how things used to be in the church. We worked very closely together until he started to go his own way, this disintegrated slightly.
‘When he arrived at the church we got on splendidly, he called me ‘Papa Alex’. We were good friends, but this tended to change when his way of doing things moved away from what I was used to.
‘The number of marriages went from four or five weddings a year to 10 a week, there were two a day some days.
‘When Nathan Ntege was introduced to the church he said he would support the Ugandan population over here. Most of the people being married were not members of our church, they were strangers to us. I didn’t recognise any of the brides or grooms and did not see them again.
‘I had the job of reading out the banns in church. They were difficult to read. I had problems pronouncing some of the names which gave quite a bit of amusement.’
The number of marriages in the church and other changes in procedure meant he was elected to send a letter in 2009 to the bishop, saying they were worried about the way things were being done in the church.
Mr Robb said: ‘It was a result of old members of church feeling something was not quite right. We mentioned the large number of weddings and the fact the accounts had not been produced for three years.
‘The pastoral care suffered, the problem was so much time was taken up by weddings that he didn’t get round to the rest of his duties as he should have done.’
However, he said the population of the church itself had doubled in the time, which could have led to an increase in the number of marriages.
He added: ‘In one year we had the biggest number of confirmations in the country, 57.’
Seven defendants deny a total of 51 charges relating to immigration offences.
The trial continues.