Swazuri colluding with Kenyatta University to take our land, squatters claim

National Land Commission chairman Muhammad Swazuri.

Six Jubilee MPs have waded into the controversy over 70 acres in Nairobi that are the subject of a dispute between a public university and 18,000 squatters.

The construction of a Sh3 billion hospital by Kenyatta University now hangs in the balance after the squatters vowed to ignore an eviction notice issued to them by National Land Commission (NLC) chairman Muhammad Swazuri.

The residents instead accused Dr Swazuri and the university of seeking to dispossess them of their ancestral land.

The land, which borders the university, is in Kamae, in Roysambu.

The Jubilee MPs, who included area MP Waihenya Ndirangu and Starehe’s Maina Kamanda, led the residents in a demonstration, demanding that the university should drop its claim to the land.

The university wants the land for its expansion plans and its Vice Chancellor, Olive Mugenda, has repeatedly said the residents were on the land illegally.

Eviction threat

She accused the residents of “grabbing” the land and resisting efforts by the university to recover it.

But the MPs and residents accused the university of engaging in business instead of concentrating on its core mandate of offering education.

A church service attended by the MPs turned into a platform for condemning the eviction threat, with Kamanda saying he would seek audience with Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu over the matter.

Dagoretti South MP Dennis Waweru and former Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waititu also called on the Government to give the residents title deeds.

“We are children of Mau Mau. What we want is the title deed for the land. It is the residents who elected Uhuru Kenyatta, and we are his representatives. We are giving Swazuri one month to provide residents with a title deed,” said Mr Waweru.

According to residents, the history of the land dates back to the early 1960s when it was allocated to them by President Jomo Kenyatta. They claimed successive governments allowed them to occupy the land, including providing them with allotment letters.

Carrying twigs and placards, the crowd marched across the length of the disputed land where they showed journalists sections that were already occupied by the threatened families.

Earlier, Kenyatta University students had threatened to evict the squatters at the end of a seven-day notice period they issued.