Swazuri raises alarm over grabbing of land owned by State Lodges

Journalists are shown a hotel being built on Mombasa State House land on August 31, 2014. Mombasa High Court Judge Samuel Mukunya lifted an order he had issued barring the developer from building on the land in the upmarket Kizingo area. PHOTO | LABAN WALLOGA |

The National Land Commission has raised the red flag on illegal allocation of parcels of land belonging to various State Lodges across the country to private owners.

National Land Commission chairman Muhamad Swazuri said on Tuesday that portions of land belonging to Nakuru State House and to State Lodges in Kisumu, Kakamega and Eldoret had been grabbed.

“We have credible information that land belonging to State Houses in Nakuru and Mombasa, and State Lodges in Kisumu, Kakamega and Eldoret have indeed been grabbed and went to private hands,” he said.

Dr. Swazuri said officers from the commission had been dispatched to the affected regions to establish the current ownership and status of the parcels of the said land.

“As I talk to you now, we are just leaving for Nakuru with some of the teams. From there we shall proceed to Kisumu, Kakamega and Eldoret,” he said.

He said a group had been dispatched to State House in Mombasa to launch investigations into claims that a portion of its land had been grabbed.

CONSTRUCTING A HOTEL

The anti-corruption commission revealed on Sunday that private developers had grabbed the land and are putting up a hotel on it.

Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) officials and the media visited the site Sunday morning and found a hotel coming up less than 100 metres from State House, the official residence of the President while at the Coast.

NLC chairman Muhamad Swazuri on Tuesday said the land, if illegally allocated, would be repossessed and a residence for the Deputy President built on it.

“I will personally join the Mombasa team to strengthen the investigations. I want to tell the country that we shall repossess all that land because it is our mandate. The constitution empowers the NLC to repossess all grabbed land in the country,” he said.

A former Mombasa administrator spoke on Tuesday of “great rot” involving government land in Mombasa in the 1990s.

He said pieces of land on which the Mombasa District Commissioner’s and the Provincial Police Officer’s residences sat were allocated to powerful civil servants, who in turn sold it to private developers.