Ardhi House woes could delay Lamu project schedule

By GAKUU MATHENGE

Delayed land reforms and failure to establish institutions to handle compulsory land acquisitions are threatening to delay critical civil works on the Lamu-Juba transport corridor.

The mega project was commissioned by President Kibaki, his South Sudan counterpart Salva Kiir and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

The three leaders commissioned the construction of the second port at Lamu in a ceremony that should have happened in November last year, but delayed over lack of preparedness in Nairobi.

Sources familiar with the implementation schedule of the Lamu-Juba infrastructure development say although the Cabinet had instructed acting Finance Minister Njeru Githae to immediately release funds to facilitate rolling out of urgent works like land acquisitions, lapses at Ardhi House were getting in the way.

Mega deal

The Lamu-Juba Transport Corridor — officially known as Lamu Port and Lamu Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (Lapsset) — features 1,720km railway line, a highway, oil pipeline, cyber optic cable lines, two airports and two resort cities at Isiolo and the southern tip of Lake Turkana. Experts now fear although Kibaki had made commitments to Ethiopia and South Sudan, the full-scale commencement of the project may have to wait until after the General Election owing to the legal technicalities involved in setting up key institutions to handle land acquisitions and compensations in Lamu, Garissa, Isiolo, Tana River, Marsabit, Samburu, Pokot and Turkana Counties through which the corridor passes.

And on the spot is Lands Minister James Orengo and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Lands and Natural Resources Mutava Musyimi, whose stewardship of critical land reforms since the promulgation of the Constitution has resulted in busted timelines, and extensions for two months for Bills that should have been finalised by February 25.

Although Orengo and Musyimi were icons of the Second Liberation, their stewardship of the land reforms has put their commitment to genuine land reforms to question, especially their failure to expedite Bills in time.

An audit of the Land and Land Registration Bills by the United States Agency for International Development in January concluded they fell short of expectation envisaged in the National Land Policy (Sessional Paper No 4 of 200), and the Constitution.

On January 20, the Cabinet put Orengo and Ardhi House on the spot when it imposed a freeze on all transactions involving trust lands, renewal of leases on private and public lands until the formation of the National Land Commission (NLC), which has been vested with massive powers in management and administration of land.

According a PPS statement, the Government also intends to review all "those leases that may have been irregularly renewed with immediate effect". By the time of going to press, it was not immediately clear if the review had been completed, or what it may have established.

Trust lands

Among other things, many probity questions have been raised around renewal of expiring leases, transition and conversion of 999-year leases abolished by the new Constitution, and capacity of Ardhi House bureaucrats in handling massive acquisition of trust lands without new laws and institutions spelt out in the new dispensation.

At a meeting on January 19, and which Orengo did not attend because he was attending a meeting of MPs in Mombasa, the Cabinet resolved to freeze all transactions on trust lands, including renewal of expired leases, disposal of public assets by the central Government and Local Authorities until the NLC was established. Additionally, the Cabinet resolved to review all leases that had been recently affected since the promulgation of the Constitution.

"The Cabinet yesterday resolved to freeze all renewals of expired land leases and review all those that may have been irregular," a PPS statement on January 20 said.

Although the new Constitution had recommended the NLC be set up within the first 18 months of promulgation, this is not the case.

Ardhi House failed to present NLC, Land Registration and Land Bills in time, until a week to the February 26 deadline, forcing Parliament to extend the timelines by 60 days to allow for sufficient debate.

The new timelines are expected to take Parliament up to the end of April and early May to conclude debate, after which advertisements, recruitment, vetting and actual hiring of NLC commissioners, staff and the setting up of functional systems may drag until after July.

With electioneering period entering a critical phase and players and schedules getting distracted and disrupted, some fear NLC may not be set up until after elections.

Land Development and Governance Institute lobby official Ibrahim Mwathane says he hoped the moratorium imposed by the Cabinet would be short.

"The moratorium should not take too long as to result in unintended punishment of innocent parties among them banks and private developers, who were servicing loans and whose schedules have now been frozen for no faults of their making. The commitments Kenya has made to Ethiopia and South Sudan on the Lamu project are also tied to ongoing land reforms that could hold everyone and everything in abeyance if not expedited," Mwathane said.