The governmennt has stopped plans to pay Sh1 billion for land adjacent to Deputy President William Ruto’s Harambee House Annex office owned by a traditional dancer who entertained founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta .
The National Land Commission has received a notice from a former MP through the Attorney General’s office indicating that the land was irregular transferred from City Hall to Rahab Wanjiru Evans.
The commission had earlier declared Ms Wanjiru the valid holder of the title deed following complaints that the land was public property and allocated irregularly.
“We will review whether the transfer from City Hall was irregular. But remember local authorities had the right to allocate their land to private investors.”
“We have an appeal over the land and we cannot pay until we review the complaint,” NLC acting chairperson Abigael Mbagaya told the Business Daily in a phone interview.
The Treasury had allocated Sh500 million in the budget for the year ended June for the purchase of the 0.7-acre plot, and a balance of Sh500 million was to be allocated in the current financial year, pushing the buyout deal to Sh1 billion.
But questions over ownership of the land have returned and look set to scuttle the deal after the NLC earlier backed the family of Ms Wanjiru, who was a former freedom fighter and a member of the Nyakinyua Group, which was famous for entertaining the late Kenyatta.
She also served as Nakuru District Kanu Women Wing Leader during former president Daniel arap Moi’s era in the 1980s, underlying her proximity to power from the 1970s.
“The title to the estate of Rahab Wanjiru Evans is upheld,” said the NLC in an earlier notice. Land in Nairobi remains quite expensive with parcels in Upper Hill going for an average of Sh509.5 million an acre, according to real estate consultancy HassConsult.
This underlines the worth of private land, like the one in Wanjiru’s family hands, in what is considered the government square, which houses the DP’s office, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s office and Parliament.
The proximity of Ms Wanjiru’s land adjacent to government square added weight to the complaints that the parcel was public land.
The land commission gazetted the open space behind the DP’s office for compulsory acquisition in June 2015 on security grounds.
MPs had questioned the valuation of the property given that it had no buildings on it. Ms Wanjiru died in 2000.