Inside NLC's race to approve billions in questionable land claims

Parliament begins vetting a new cohort of commissioners for the National Land Commission. [File, Standard] 

Parliament begins vetting a new cohort of commissioners for the National Land Commission (NLC) on Monday amid swirling questions about their suitability raised by various stakeholders.
 
Some professional groups, including the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya (ISK), have strongly opposed the shortlisted candidates, citing what they describe as a glaring exclusion of key land professionals such as surveyors, valuers and physical planners: fields explicitly recognized under Section 8 of the NLC Act as core qualifications for commissioners.
 
In Kenya, as has now become tradition with such constitutional bodies, commissions have increasingly become the perfect retirement plans for political rejects and those aligned with the government of the day.

 
A section of the Borana, Maasai and Kony communities have expressed their anger and submitted petitions to the National Assembly challenging the suitability of Abdillahi Saggaf Alawy, the proposed chairperson, whom they accuse of partisanship.
 
Dr Alawy's tenure as chairman of the board of directors of the Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC), the communities argue, was marked with irregularities, including claims of hiving off huge tracts of public land to the State body, something they want duly probed and audited by the vetting team.
 
The Alawy family is itself accused of securing a freehold title for approximately 309 hectares of land on Wasini Island at the Coast of Kenya after a roughly 50-year legal battle, a decision facilitated by the NLC. Local residents and leaders are challenging his nomination, arguing that the land in question is ancestral land and that the NLC's decision to grant the title to his family is unjust.
 
President William Ruto proposed Alawy as chairperson, alongside commissioners Susan Khakasa Oyatsi, Daniel Murithi Muriungi, Vincent Kigen Cheruiyot, Julie Ouma Oseko, Mohamed Abdi Haji Mohamed, and Mary Yiane Seneta.
 
The Court of Appeal cleared their recruitment and nomination and affirmed the tenure of the only two serving commissioners, Esther Murugi Mathenge and Tiyah Galgalo Ali, whose term remains intact and is set to expire on December 20, 2026.
 
But even as the spotlight shifts to the incoming team, serious questions linger over the conduct of the outgoing commission.
 
The Standard can now reveal how the departing commissioners quietly committed the country to billions of shillings in controversial compensation payments linked to compulsory land acquisition disputes.