Squatters write to Matiang'i in row over city land

Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i is yet to respond to the pleas presented to his office.

Thousands of squatters have written a letter to Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i seeking his intervention in a dispute over a multi-billion shilling piece of land in Nairobi.

The squatters claim to have been granted the land in the 1990s.

The land in Ruai was allocated the squatters in a full council meeting held in September 1999 chaired by then presiding mayor J N Kariuki.

However, prominent politicians and businessmen are said to be developing the land after kicking the squatters out.

A protest letter sent to the CS last month claims the 1,600 acres next to Nairobi sewerage treatment plant and currently valued at about Sh25 billion was irregularly dished out by city fathers in 1999.

The land is undergoing massive development, including scores of residential and commercial buildings, as well as educational institutions despite the ownership battles playing out in court.

Each of the estimated 5,000 squatters was, according to the letter, allocated an eighth of an acre, on which they intended to build homes.

However, they say they were violently evicted six years ago in an exercise that left one person dead. One person was ran over by the bulldozers and died on the spot during the eviction.

“On 18/12/2013, without any lawful eviction order, a group of armed youth accompanied by police officers and bulldozers raided the homes and forcibly and illegally evicted us from our own homes,” reads the protest letter signed by one Ali Fugicha, who claims to be the chairman of the squatters.

Mr Matiang'i is yet to respond to the pleas presented to his office.

Fugicha further claims that a governor sold the land which has previously been adjudged as public to the developers for Sh1.2 billion.

He says the group sought an injunction to stop their eviction but the orders granted by Lady Justice Gacheru have so far been ignored

Government records relating to the land that was intended for the expansion of the sewerage treatment plant show it should have reverted back to government after the irregular allocation.

In 2010, G G Gachihi, the registrar of titles, canceled the allocation of the land to private developers through a gazette notice which effectively meant that even the squatters would not have a claim on the land.

Land parcels

Gachihi specifically made reference to parcels Nairobi L.R. 209/11157, Nairobi L.R. 12979/3, Nairobi L.R. 12979/4, Nairobi L.R. 13444 and Nairobi L.R. 13446 all in the area around the sewerage treatment plant.

“The allocations were therefore illegal and unconstitutional. Under the circumstances and in view of the public need and interest, the Government revokes all the said titles,” he wrote.

Many of the squatters have since died, leaving their surviving family members to fight it out in court for the property.

It is, however, not clear why the squatters were allocated the land, considering the rapid population growth in Nairobi and the need to expand the sewerage treatment facility next to it.