Tobiko should put his house in order before demolishing others

Environment Cabinet Secretary Keriako Tobiko.  PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • President Uhuru Kenyatta has, on several occasions, reminded us that Kenya is a lawful nation.
  • The county government of Nairobi has continuously received land rates for these respective parcels without delay.

If you currently live in any of Lang’ata’s new estate developments, chances are you haven’t been sleeping like a baby this past week.

The individual responsible for your unsolicited insomnia is Environment Cabinet Secretary Keriako Tobiko, who, for the past week, has been on an environmental conservation tour doing the Lord’s work and seeking to succeed where Adam and Eve failed in the Garden of Eden.

He is determined to reclaim the grabbed land that was once part of the Ngong Forest complex, with an emphasis on the parcels around Lang’ata and surrounding areas.

There are few adjectives left to describe the type of government we have in this country. We are in the middle of a global pandemic.

The Health CS, Mutahi Kagwe, has been urging Kenyans to stay indoors to help the government pin our curve to the ground. However, the Environment minister wants to throw hundreds out into this July cold if they can’t vacate, and you wonder why he’s competing with the virus on who can kill dreams the most.

DISPUTES

Mr Tobiko doesn’t need to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to know that there are more diplomatic ways of handling land ownership disputes — and scaremongering isn’t one of them.

The tactic didn’t work for the British colonialists in Kenya; it isn’t working for those who have been cursing the coronavirus and it won’t work for the Ngong Forest reclamation band.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has, on several occasions, reminded us that Kenya is a lawful nation. If the ministry has a dispute with the Lang’ata landowners, they should file a suit in court to challenge the gazette notice that altered the boundaries of Ngong Forest.

In any case, it is officers from his ministry (albeit in the years gone by and before his tenure), who approved the gazettement of this boundary alteration. It shouldn’t be difficult to retrieve their identities. It is pitiful that the minister has chosen to demolish people’s houses instead of putting his in order.

These people you want to put out of home and hearth paid all the necessary levies to secure construction approvals. The county government of Nairobi has continuously received land rates for these respective parcels without delay.


If there are people who should be threatened with sleeping in a cold jail cell, it is these government officials who have been keeping themselves warm in public offices while receiving money by false pretence. There has to be a gift for peace-loving Kenyans who choose to live in the straight and narrow, buying land above board.

You cannot wake up one morning to tell them to surrender the land to the bees and weaverbirds just like that, then threaten them with bulldozers.

ONLINE FILES

We understand the courts in Nairobi are only accepting online files, but it is not a difficult task to navigate the online judiciary portal. As a matter of fact, there might even be an aide, a personal assistant — even an intern — who can help the minister do so successfully. It is not only cheaper, but it will also allow him to study from home and help us keep Covid-19 out of Lang’ata.

We have heard Mr Tobiko reveal that some of those responsible for grabbing the Ngong Forest land are powerful government officials who used various proxies and entities. At this time when a sitting Member of Parliament has just been dealt a hammer blow by the courts for eating our maize, we are wondering why the CS will not send the names and files of these land grabbers to our investigative agencies so that they can also go to the prison tailor for their measurements to be taken.

If the rule of law and strict adherence to due process no longer guarantees anyone a clean land title in this country, then the government should come out in the open and make the announcement so that we can all register to play in the muddy pitches with no Video Assistant Referee (VAR) to maintain law and order, as we wait for the ultramodern stadiums we were promised in 2013 to be constructed.

GOVERNMENT SEAL

This farcical merry-go-round by government agencies has now led Kenyans to wonder what’s genuine in this country anymore.

If a land title deed — complete with a government seal — is now being regarded as a mere piece of paper by the same government that issued it, what about the Kenyan passport issued by the Immigration department? What about our birth certificates? Our IDs?

Kenyans are beginning to question whether they are even Kenyan citizens, and it would make sense because the government hasn’t been treating us like we are.

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