NLC withholding Sh460m for compensating land owners

The National Land Commission (NLC) is withholding over Sh460 million meant to compensate land owners along the Port Reitz Airport road in Mombasa following land ownership disputes.

The commission chairman Muhamad Swazuri who chaired a meeting of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) at School of Government in Mombasa on Tuesday, said that Wakfu — Kibibi binti Mohamed Elmambasiya — was embroiled in an ownership dispute with 18 private developers.

“The NLC cannot make payments because we don’t know who to pay. The disputes must be resolved before any compensation is made,” he said.

A representative of the Wakfu Ms Khadijah Hamisi Shafi who is a great grandchild of Kibibi said they had a mother freehold title deed to the land, and told the commission that some of those claiming ownership of the land were fraudsters.

Mr Swazuri said that the commission had detected some fraud and that some signatures and national identity cards had been forged in what he termed “a hierarchy of cases” involving the land.”

“Some of the 18 owners appearing before the commission today and tomorrow have presented documents with detectable fraud, an indication that they could have acquired the purported plots illegally,” he said.

He said that the commission had called the 18 claiming to own land in the Wakfu to tell it how they had acquired the land.

A lawyer Mr Abdulhafeez Nooran representing Sikandra A. Pasta and Frazana Banu Pasta said his client had acquired land legally and through legal means and that he had changed its title deed from leasehold to freehold.

Lawyers representing their clients had difficult time from the commissioners to justify how they had acquired the said plots which they had developed.

Mr Swazuri said that his commission would go ahead to compensate the private developers for their premises and loss of business but make the bare land compensation after the issues are determined.

He also warned that any land lease issued from 2013 by any authority other than the NLC was null and void.

“We published a public notice last week warning banks, mortgage firms, financial institutions and other entities that any lease not issued by us through the Chief Land Registrar in accordance with Section 23(2) of the Land Act 2012 and Land Amendment Act 2016 is null and void,” he said.

He warned residents of invading private land saying it was illegal and that invaders would be prosecuted.