Government isn’t willing to sort out land mess

Either we want to tackle and settle Kenya’s land question starting with Lamu and then the Coast region or we don’t.

We are either out to define the land problem and then spell how to solve it or we are not. We cannot, and will not, address and redress the land question if we do not know it and the road map.

So, the question now is very clear. Was President Uhuru Kenyatta out to solve the burning land issue in Lamu, which is the allocation of huge chunks of it to mainly upcountry people to the exclusion of locals, or was he playing politics when he recently announced the revocation of titles for a whopping 500,000 acres to some 22 companies?

This is for certain: In view of the insecurity that has plagued the county for two months and which has in part been attributed to the land question and given the fact that insecurity poses a significant threat to the multi-billion-dollar Lamu Port and South Sudan Transport (Lapsset) corridor, the President had to act and act quickly, firmly and decisively.

The revocation was seen as firmness. And that the President ordered immediate investigations by the respective instruments of government with a view to prosecuting the culpable appeared to suggest decisiveness and commitment.

But the events that followed would appear to paint a totally different picture. First, the opposition, Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord), dismissed the annulment of the titles, saying it was illegal. Since then the waters have been muddied, the discussion sullied and the environment poisoned.

FACED ARREST

Hot on the heels of the President’s action, accusing fingers were pointed at Siaya Senator James Orengo, the immediate former Minister for Lands and a confidant of Cord leader, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. News bulletins that evening suggested Mr Orengo faced imminent arrest because it was he who presided over the fraudulent allocations.

As all were waiting for Mr Orengo to find his tongue and put his accusers to the sword as is his wont, Cord reacted rather strangely for a movement of law and order, accountability and champion of the downtrodden. The party threatened to expose the land ills of the governing Jubilee Alliance and their architects if the government indeed arrested Mr Orengo.

No, it was no longer about the government exposing land grabbers, arresting and arraigning them. Now Cord and Jubilee were squaring up to each other and, like kingpins of the underworld, telling each other: “I know who you have killed and what you killed for and where you kept it. So let’s keep it like that — a draw — or this place will stink!”

When Mr Orengo eventually found his tongue, he was not his confident, eloquent brickbat-happy self. But he was determined to tell the government he knows where the bodies are buried. He went to his news conference armed with 1,000 names of people, he said, whose titles he had revoked because they had been irregularly acquired.

Holding himself forth as standing with the downtrodden, he said he had been fought by, among others, Labour Cabinet Secretary Kazungu Kambi for revoking titles. And, he said, among the people who featured on that list of 1,000 was Deputy President William Ruto. Mr Kambi confirmed the revocation but added that he had gone to court and won back his title.

WENT MUM

Mr Ruto, who had loudly weighed in on the matter soon after the President revoked the Lamu titles, calling Cord protectors of land thieves, suddenly went mum. He may have realised that he had tied himself in knots. A court recently found him guilty of grabbing 100 acres of land from a hapless Uasin Gishu resident in the wake of the 2007 post-election violence.

Little wonder Mr Ruto’s sidekick, Majority Leader Aden Duale, suddenly, boldly and sensationally accused Mr Otieno Kajwang’, another Odinga confidant, of selling some 500,000 work permits and identity cards to terrorists, drug traffickers and other criminals when he was the Minister for Immigration.

Mr Odinga must wonder who among his confidants will next be accused of corruption. Land or not, Cord has been put on notice: Don’t throw stones; you live in glass houses.

In the meantime, our all-knowing government, says Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu, cannot tell the owners of Lamu’s 500,000 acres from their proxies.

So, is government ready to tackle the land question? No.

Opanga is a media consultant; [email protected]