Owner of disputed land threatens to demolish police station under construction

A resident of Navakholo constituency has threatened to demolish a police station being constructed on a disputed piece of land.

Mr Richard Nambiro, 70, said he would not allow the construction of the station at Makunga to be completed unless he was compensated for his land.

Mr Nambiro said the Makunga Community Police Project committee approached him in 2011 to give up his land at Makunga along the Kakamega-Mumias road for the construction of the police station. In exchange, the committee promised to give him another property at Shikomari.

Construction of the Makunga Police Station stopped after the original title deed to Nambiro’s land went missing.

Police station

Efforts to put up a police station were prompted by the protests of residents, who said they were tired of a ramshackle police post.

“Committee chairman David Malala secured another plot for me in Shikomari as per our agreement and I was planning to move in. However, the ownership documents were never handed to me, yet I had already given them the title to my original land,” Nambiro said yesterday.

Other committee members were then area assistant chief Phanuel Wesonga and John Chunge, who are now both deceased, and Beatrice Amukangu, who was the secretary. Nambiro added: “I gave them the original title deed to my two-acre land. The title was taken to the Lands Registry for processing. However, the original title deed was never brought back to me.”

After a four-year standoff, Nambiro, with the help of a local human rights activist, Dan Mmayi, went  to the Lands Registry in Kakamega to find out why the title deed had not been returned after the committee failed to give him the deed to the property he had been given.

Nambiro said he only found a photocopy of the title deed. An officer at the Lands Registry, who sought anonymity, told The Standard that he had advised Nambiro to report the matter to the police. The officer said he also told him to write to the Ministry of Lands in Nairobi.

The officer said the ministry processed a new title deed for Nambiro after 60 days. It was published in the Kenya Gazette thereby, annulling the first title deed, which the committee had taken. The title is dated November 23, 2016.

After getting the new title, Nambiro said he wrote to the security committee to demolish the structures unless he was compensated.

Jonathan Weche, the project’s former treasurer, said the land in Shikomari cost Sh1 million and was donated by the Lurambi Constituency Development Fund before the area was split and Makunga was moved to Navakholo.

He said Navakholo MP Emmanuel Wangwe, gave Sh1.8 million for the construction. “Construction started but no tendering was done. We asked why Nambiro hadn’t been given the title for the new plot and why the committee had not procured a contractor but no explanation was given,” said Mr Weche.