Address land issues or risk more lives

What you need to know:

  • The NLC requested Sh14 billion in this year’s Budget and were granted a mere Sh1.6 billion, yet they have been appointed to manage all public land in the country.
  • The Ministry of Lands has submitted its Miscellaneous 2014 Bill to Parliament that further reduces the powers of NLC and reduces it to a mere department in the Lands Ministry.

Those blaming the opposition for the Mpeketoni massacre should recall that ODM could not even organise party elections and had no semblance of shape to the welcome home rally for Raila Odinga.

This attack was clinically planned and summarily executed to precision. Kikuyu men were identified for elimination and their businesses destroyed with the clear intention of demoralising the nation and setting ethnic communities against each other.

Whoever conceived this wicked scheme must be delighted to witness rising ethnic tensions as Kenyans fight each other, still only with words, thank God. Selecting Mpeketoni as the venue for the bloodshed fed the conflicting ethnic narratives that have been associated with this contentious land for half a century.

Land has consistently been used as the reason — and frequently the excuse — to commit horrific crimes and divide communities for three decades.

Agenda IV of the Serena Agreement in 2008 prioritised land reform as a precondition for peaceful cohesion and economic development. Chapter V of the Constitution is devoted to the subject and we have three new land laws in place as well as the National Land Commission (NLC). But what has changed or been addressed?

The NLC requested Sh14 billion in this year’s Budget and were granted a mere Sh1.6 billion, yet they have been appointed to manage all public land in the country.

The media have focused on Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu’s personal intervention to clean up the filing system in Ardhi House. This exercise was intended as a joint venture between NLC and Ministry of Lands, but the commission was later locked out. To date they have not been able to access the files on public land, many of whose leases are due for renewal at this time.

LEASES DUE FOR RENEWAL

Mischief surrounds this whole affair, especially when you consider that a huge percentage of the 99-year-old leases are due for renewal this year. We are talking here about millions of acres that were acquired by settlers a century ago. 

Is that the mischievous aim of the filing exercise to extend, transfer or alter these leases secretly?

There is every reason to be worried about what the Executive is really doing now that it has got its hands on those files.

The Ministry of Lands has submitted its Miscellaneous 2014 Bill to Parliament that further reduces the powers of NLC and reduces it to a mere department in the Lands Ministry.

This move is consistent with the Executive’s efforts to decimate the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) and its reluctance to appoint commissioners to the KNCHR.

We can also include the unjustified delay in swearing in 25 High Court judges to the list of executive decisions that are stifling reform. Besides, the Cabinet has sat on the Community Land Bill and Evictions and Resettlement Bill for nine months.

The NLC, too, is not without blame, having appointed a task force to look at historical injustices that includes characters listed in the Akiwumi and Ndungu reports.

Mpeketoni is a wake-up call that shockingly reminds us of the consequences of politicising instead of addressing land reform. Yesterday it was Lamu, today it is Baringo, but the Executive does not get the message.

[email protected]; Twitter: @GabrielDolan1