Ruto should reject Weston land offer and original sellers charged

For a man who proudly boasts of his penchant for land and property ownership and development, Deputy President William Ruto must be either very unlucky, careless or naive in some of his acquisitions.

For the second time since he rose to great heights in national leadership, Dr Ruto has had to own up to innocently buying land that ultimately turned out to have been illegally acquired.

STOLEN PROPERTY

The latest was in his Weston Hotel saga on Nairobi’s Langata Road, where, after a long period of denials and obfuscation, Dr Ruto not only confirmed that he had a stake in the enterprise but also admitted that the land had been illegally acquired, only that he was an innocent purchaser.

Previous to that was the court saga over another piece of land in Uasin Gishu County ‘grabbed’ from a displaced victim of the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

In 2013, the High Court ordered the DP to surrender the 100-acre farm and pay the owner, Mr Adrian Gilbert Muteshi, Sh5 million in compensation for the illegal occupation.

DP Ruto claimed then that he was an innocent purchaser, and the court ruled that the land had been irregularly and fraudulently subdivided and sold to him.

The Deputy President was not found culpable of land grabbing or being in possession of stolen property, with the court concluding that the guilty parties were the agents who acted on his behalf.

I have never heard whether Dr Ruto’s land brokers were subsequently pursued by the authorities for fraud, forgery and other illegal actions.

Anyway, one would assume that, once having been the victim of such fraud, Dr Ruto would be much more circumspect in future land acquisitions.

NAIROBI'S POOREST

Then came the Weston saga, where Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) land was ‘privatised’ and subsequently sold to the Ruto enterprise.

So ashamed was Dr Ruto when the news broke at the beginning of 2015 that he even distanced himself from the hotel and instead got one of his old Youth for Kanu ’92 acolytes to pose as the owner.

It was particularly embarrassing that the matter came to public attention when a developer fenced off the playground for the adjacent Langata Road Primary School.

Tear-gassed pupils

Word soon went round that it was Weston trying to grab the land from a school patronised by Nairobi’s poorest. Demonstrations organised by civil society and images of police unleashing teargas and truncheons on primary school pupils shamed the authorities into question.

The school playground was restored and fenced, though the developer who came forward, veteran architect and property developer Harban Singh, claimed to have a valid title. Dr Ruto hence earned the moniker “Arap Singh”.

The matter came up again more recently when the civil aviation overseer filed a claim with the National Lands Commission (NLC) for return of the Weston land.

Again, poor Dr Ruto emerged as an innocent victim of land fraudsters, with his lawyers narrating that he had nothing to do with land grabbing or acquiring the land owned by the public entity.

Weston said it bought the land from third parties, who are the ones who should be held liable, while naming Priority Limited and Monene Investments Limited.

ANTI-GRAFT WAR

Strangely enough, there was no evidence on the owners of the two companies being accused, and neither were they called to defend themselves.

Stranger still was the ruling by the NLC that Dr Ruto-Weston could keep the irregularly acquired land as long as they paid the purchase price to the civil aviation regulator.

That kind of ruling cannot be allowed to stand. It amounts to regularising an illegality, or legitimising plunder of public property. It sets a precedent where anyone found guilty of theft or possession of stolen property can be allowed to keep the ill-gotten gains as long as he or she paid some peppercorn value.

That ruling is a betrayal of the fight against corruption and a salute to the forces of impunity. It is not a privilege that would be given an ordinary person.

As an innocent victim and man of honour, as he claims, Dr Ruto should do the rightful thing and reject that extraordinary ‘bendover’ from the lands commission.

He can sue whoever sold the land to him for full recovery of purchase price and development costs.

The Director of Criminal Investigations and the Director of Public Prosecution must also step in and pursue the directors of the two companies and KCAA managers who may have colluded with them to illegally grab the public land and then con the innocent Deputy President into buying it.

[email protected]; @MachariaGaitho