Government must take action against corrupt Lands officials

By Billow Kerrow

Demolitions by the Government and the on-going investigation by the joint parliamentary committee reveals the pervasive extent of corruption and fraud in public institutions charged with executing land transactions and safeguarding our immovable assets.

Watching the committee inquiry makes one shudder at the thought that our homes and offices may indeed be sold or transferred fraudulently with tacit approval of Lands officials without our knowledge.

Nothing is certain anymore in the Ministry of Lands. The sad thing is that the Commissioner of Lands and his team are either negligent or indifferent about all the corruption, fraud and irregular deals stoking Kenyans at Lands Ministry offices nationwide.

On Syokimau, he told MPs to their face that he knew the searches, titles, allotment letters and Gazette notice were all fake, but he did not have any qualms about it. Invariably, all the documents, fake or genuine, come out of his office.

It is not surprising that only a few months ago, our learned friends led by Law Society of Kenya bosses and former KACC Director PLO marched to his office to protest at the rot. This infuriated his minister so much that he led the subsequent onslaught in Parliament to bundle PLO out of office.

Yet, they can now publicly admit they preside over massive corruption in their dockets, that has now led to many Kenyans losing their lifetime savings. And true to our emerging culture of shirking responsibility, the commissioner was quick to tell MPs that individual land registry officials ‘must carry their own cross’.

Thousands of poor Kenyans have for long suffered loss of property as crafty Ministry of Lands officials colluded with cartels to steal their hard-earned possessions.

The corporate world has equally been victim of massive fraud in land deals perpetuated with full participation of Ministry of Lands officials. Banks that financed these property and constructions relied on duly approved searches sanctioned by this ministry and lost heavily. Our courts are clogged by land cases that run for decades because of the minefield of competing interests, often by complicit Lands officials.

To perfect the rent-seeking and fraudulent practices, it has in place a labyrinth of archaic, cumbersome and bureaucratic procedure for land registration that leverages the public to assign the process to their agents and brokers.

They work in cahoots with equally corrupt teams at the company registry who register duplicate companies with phoney directors that collude with the Lands mafia to transfer and sell private and public land and property.

The local authorities, too, Mavoko for instance, obtained Ministry of Lands approvals for the Syokimau land undoubtedly with connivance of senior Lands officials. In Eastleigh, genuine titleholders lost their property after the Defence Ministry invoked a colonial era provision that there should be no developments within 50m of their airport installation.

Dozens of other buildings were also marked for demolition because of their height. It is sheer madness that Justice Warsame calls the demolitions a ‘security monster’ that must be confronted before it ‘runs amok’.

If an airport were located in the middle of the city, it would be naÔve to suggest that clearing a 50m perimeter from its fence will provide security, or that tall buildings affording airport visibility pose a security risk.

There are many international and military airports located right in cities with adjacent skyscrapers, but they manage their risks professionally. Evictions constitute a grave human rights violation according to the United Nations.

Its Advisory Group on Forced Evictions monitor such evictions carried out without due process, but have remained mute on Nairobi where they are located. The Government risks massive legal action for compensation by parties holding legal titles.

But the Legislature and the Executive must take punitive action against institutions and individuals who callously destroyed lives and assets of Kenyans without due process.

The writer is a former MP for Mandera Central and political economist