Prof. Swazuri has articulated a
position on the land that has not been impeached by any of his accusers, yet
the drums of war have continued to beat. According to the chairman, the land
where Drive-inn Primary School and Ruaraka Secondary School are located is in
private land and not public land.
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| National Land Commission chairman Mohamed Swazuri |
The supposedly revamped
anti-corruption fight by president Uhuru Kenyatta that has been going on for about two months now risks ending into a
farcical political witch-hunt unless government institutions act to forestall
divisiveness that have marked it.
Just when professionalism is most
required to help Kenyans address the multi-headed hydra of corruption, the
drive is being prosecuted through sheer recklessness and media innuendo that
could undermine the process in the long run. The age-old principle of the
accused being innocent until proven guilty has been thrown out of the window,
and charges are being leveled against top officers in a way that will only
create anarchy in the country.
Take the case of National Land
Commission chairman Mohamed Swazuri, against whom the drumbeats of war have
been trailed for weeks now over his handling of the controversial Ruaraka land
compensation scheme.
Prof. Swazuri has articulated a
position on the land that has not been impeached by any of his accusers, yet
the drums of war have continued to beat. According to the chairman, the land
where Drive-inn Primary School and Ruaraka Secondary School are located is in
private land and not public land.
The chairman has said that the land,
for which the government has paid Sh1.5 billion payment to Afrison Export
Import Limited and Huelands Limited, legally belong to businessman Francis
Mburu. This legal state was not created by the chairman but has indeed been
affirmed by various government agencies including the Office of the
Attorney-General, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Lands and the
National Assembly Committee on Land.
There is a lot to be learn about
the government’s seeming irregular handling of the property, which is reported
to be a whopping 96 acres! According to government records, the land title is
held by Deposit Protection Fund, the Central Bank of Kenya, appointed
liquidator of Mr Phillip Wahome’s Continental Bank of Kenya.
How Mr Wahome passed the property to
Mr Mburu, and the discharge of the liquidation order, are vital aspects of the
whole saga which the media have completely ignored to shed light on. This is
because therein lies the fact that this land was always private and the
government can only acquire it for its uses upon compensating the owners.
Records at the Ministry of Lands
indicate that as of March 28, 1984, the registered owner objected the
conditional approval of the subdivision by the Nairobi City Council, precisely
because this was private land.
In 2017, the Attorney-General wrote
an advisory opinion to the Ministry of Education confirming the public interest
of the schools and the need for compulsory acquisition since the institutions
were on private land.
“The Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of
Education wrote to the NLC on March, 17 acknowledging the complaint and
confirming that indeed there were public schools built on the private land. The
CS then formally requested the commission to guide it in the requisite formal
process and secure public interest, by acquiring the land on which the schools
stand,” Prof Swazuri said at a media conference last week.
The question is a simple one: If
these serious state institutions did their investigations on the land file and
confirmed in writing that the land is indeed private, why is Prof. Swazuri
being crucified for endorsing the Attorney General opinion and Ministry of
Education’s compensation of the owners to secure public interest?
Could it be that there are people,
in government and out of it, who are out to besmirch the tenure of Mr. Swazuri
and others NLC commissioners in order to drive them out of office? It is
possible this is the case, since the tenure of some NLC members is coming to an
end early next year.
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