Executive plans to derail lands team, lobby groups claim

Civil society groups have accused the Executive of trying to take over the running of the lands sector from the National Land Commission (NLC).

They also claimed that Lands secretary Charity Ngilu’s actions are suspect.

The groups said the changes in the sector brought in by the Constitution were meant to transform land governance, management and administration by taking away the power of the Executive and its principal agents’ to administer land after more than 50 years of abuse of the land governance mandate by the Executive.

“The Executive’s plan is to ensure that the National Land Commission does not get traction as a land governance constitutional organ that can deliver land reforms backed by legal, policy and budget commitments,” they said in a petition to President Uhuru Kenyatta published in Monday’s dailies.

Kenya National Land Alliance national co-ordinator Odenda Lumumba said even the much-hyped system improvement through digitisation of land records was suspicious.

“Attempts such as that of closing the Nairobi Central Lands Registry for auditing of land files cannot be genuine. We see these as signs of the Executive trying to exercise land governance through the backdoor,” read part of the petition. President Kenyatta supported the move to close the registry for 10 days from May 5.

About 1.3 million files were said to have been recovered during the process.

The civil society groups promised to launch a campaign on land reforms to stop “any further interference in the work of the National Land Commission”. “We hold that the organ responsible for oversight and monitoring the implementation of land reforms is the National Land Commission,” they said.

The stakeholders regard the issuance of titles, together with the setting up of a National Titling Centre at the Kenya Institute of Survey and Mapping, with suspicion and called on the Executive to provide Kenyans with the blueprints on the programme.

Land Development and Governance Institute chairman Ibrahim Mwathane, however, said inconsistence of laws had contributed to the infighting between the ministry and the commission.

“Under the Land Registration Act, the Cabinet secretary wields a lot of power over land registries much as the commission has a role, which is a recipe for direct conflict,” he said.

He said the Land Adjudication Act and the Land Consolidation Act, which give the Cabinet Secretary powers to administer such programmes, have not been repealed.