City Hall has disowned a deal where Jamia Mosque is seeking Sh3.9 billion for ceding land used to build a matatu terminus at Nairobi’s Globe Cinema roundabout.
The Nairobi County government has told the Environment and Lands Courts (ELC) it did not request the National Lands Commission (NLC) to forcibly acquire the 5.14-acre land.
The commission reckons it will seek the billions from City Hall for onward transfer to the trustees of Jamia Mosque who have sued the government for the payout.
In a sworn affidavit before the court, Patrick Mbogo, the county executive committee member for Urban Planning, says the Nairobi County government has never budgeted for the acquisition of the mosque’s land, nor “has it provided for it in the county integrated development plan (CIDP)”.
Mr Mbogo also says the Registered Trustees of Jamia Mosque who filed the case, “instituted it in bad faith and is fashioned to force it to acquire the property”.
The county government says this will force it to unjustly spend taxpayers’ resources.
“The Nairobi City County Government did not at any point sanction the NLC to publish Gazette Notice 643 of January 19, 2023, notifying the public of the inquiry into the proposed compulsory acquisition of the property on its behalf,” Mr Mbogo says in the affidavit dated March 10.
The county government has urged the court to quash the gazette notice through which the land in question was acquired.
Mr Mbogo also says the gazette notice by the commission was not approved by the county government and therefore amounts “to a violation of the constitutional principles of public participation, devolution and consultation as enshrined in Articles 10, 174 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010”.
“Further it says under Section 108 of the Land Act 2012 any intention by the NLC to acquire the Jamia Mosque land for public utility would have been initiated by the county executive responsible for matters related to land. This has never happened,” Mr Mbogo says.
He adds that involving the Nairobi City county executive committee member responsible for lands remains a mandatory requirement to validate any compulsory acquisition of land, and “failure to secure such approval renders the entire process legally untenable”.
City Hall has also fought the claimant’s assertions that Nairobi City County is the predecessor of the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS), saying it is the City Council of Nairobi.
NMS was established in March 2020 following a deed of transfer from Nairobi County to the national government.
The transfer encompassed key functions such as health services, transport, public works and planning. The county government says in the handover report from NMS, that the land in question was not mentioned.
The NMS had identified the Globe Cinema roundabout for use as a bus terminus to help in decongesting the central business district (CBD), but the project did not commence before the its tenure ended.
The land parcel has been acting as a holding zone for public service vehicles.
The court has been informed that without such approval, any subsequent steps towards compulsory acquisition would be procedurally flawed, illegal, and subject to nullification by the courts.
The Registered Trustees of Jamia Masjid Ahle Sunait Wal Jamiat (Jamia Mosque) is seeking a compensation of Sh3.926 billion from the Lands Commission.
In a case filed under a certificate of urgency at the Environment and Land Court, the trustees argue that there has been a one-and-a-half-year delay in compensating Jamia Mosque for the prime land.
NLC, through its lawyer Titus Koceyo, said the land is still the property of the mosque.
The commission said that the government had only expressed an intention to acquire the land via gazette notices but had not yet moved into the property to develop it as intended.
The court has directed all the parties to file written submissions before March 24, 2025 when the case will be heard.
