ISIOLO: About 20,000 families could soon be rendered landless following plans to expand the military’s School of Infantry (SOI) in Isiolo.
Emman Nakede, 78, is among agro-pastrolists living along the banks of Isiolo and Lewa Rivers, who are living in fear of eviction from Kakili village in Isiolo Central.
The old man said welcoming the army to the area in 1980 has caused them untold suffering due to abandoned military hardware and he now risks losing 10 acres of land left behind by his father Makede Kuya.
“I am now out of my father’s homestead and I do not know what I will do with my extended family. The eviction has already started,” said Mr Nakede.
John Taiti, 37, says his family has also been given a notice to vacate their two acre land at Maili Saba.
Ali Salow’s homestead, which stood on eight acres of land has already been demolished to pave way for the expansion of the army’s training ground.
Mr Salow said: “My family has already been displaced.”
Residents of Burat Ward have accused the military of expanding their land from the initial 10,000 acres to 150,000 acres.
But Department of Defence (DoD) Spokesman Bongita Ongeri dismissed the residents’ claims saying the government acquired the land for military use. He added that the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) has a title deed for the property.
Mr Ongeri said: “It is the locals who have encroached on the military land and want to pressurise Ministry of Defence to surrender the land to them and this is not possible.”
He explained that in 2003, DoD reconfirmed the beacons and found them to be intact.
“Point to note is that it is the locals who are squatters on a military land and not the KDF taking land from them,” he said
SOI is about 15km southwest of Isiolo town and the military have been conducting training in the area since 1980, sometimes with foreign troops mainly from the US. Local leaders, in a memorandum, have demanded an end to the army’s appetite for land. The leaders are Burat ward MCA Paul Mero and backed by Governor Godana Doyo, Lands Executive for Lands Ahmed Shone, Isiolo North MP Joseph Samal and Woman Representative Tiyah Galgalo.
Last year, the Chief of Defence Forces General Samson Mwathathe met the Governor and his team and agreed to resolve the matter amicably.
Mr Mero in a memorandum presented to the National Assembly Committee on Land led by Naivasha MP John Kaigi, said apart from about 20,000 locals being displaced, various institutions would suffer losses due to the evictions.
Mr Kaigi who was in Isiolo recently with his five-member committee, promised to take up the matter with DoD.
The affected families are from the Borana, Turkana, Meru, Somali and Samburu communities.
The evictions will also affect primary and secondary schools, mosques, churches, Isiolo abattoir, livestock holding ground and development works undertaken by NGOs like Action-Aid and Danida.
Following protests by residents in 2005, then SOI commandant Nicholas Bartonjo told a meeting chaired by former Isiolo DC Waweru Kimani, that the army acquired title deeds for 10,665 hectares on January 1, 2000 and a lease for 99 years. They army set up a camp in the area in 1980.
But Mr Ongeri contradicted Bartonjo saying the land was acquired by the military in the 1970s.
Last week, locals said they were given eviction notice in November last year.
“They have effected the eviction notice without any court order. That’s why some of us are not in our homesteads and farms,” said Salow.
Isiolo County Commissioner George Natembeya said he is aware of the matter.
“I have been informed on the issue by local leaders but the national government has not given me any official communication on the same,” said Mr Natembeya.
