Swazuri insisted that the land is privately owned and payment was done after due diligence was followed and if there are crosses to be carried, there are none in this case/CFM NEWS
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 11 – It was a fiery news conference where National Land Commission chairperson Mohammad Swazuri declared he was ready to face the international criminal Court at The Hague “to defend facts” over the Ruaraka land saga.
He was robustly defending the Sh1.5 billion initial payment for a 13.7-acre piece of land on which sits Ruaraka High School and Drive Inn Primary School.
After valuation, the government agreed to acquire the land at Sh3.2 billion but payment was to be done in two phases.
In the first phase, the government paid Sh1.5 billion and the pending Sh1.7 billion was to be paid later.
But the ownership of the land has been put to question, with the two schools claiming it belongs to them.
On Monday, Swazuri insisted that the land is privately owned and payment was done after due diligence was followed and if there are crosses to be carried, there are none in this case.
“You carry your own cross if it is there. If there isn’t, what do you do?” he rhetorically asked.
“What is the saga about? We are ready to defend ourselves anywhere on this land even if we are asked to go to The Hague; we shall go and defend ourselves because we have all the facts. The due diligence has been followed.”
He and other NLC officials are being probed over the payment, but Swazuri says he is armed with documents to defend his position.
“We have paid the person whom we think is the right owner. There are seven sources that have confirmed so. What do you want us to do? “Swazuri asked.
“Investigations are not murder that we are going to be killed. I am not going to be murdered because I am being investigated.”
And if anyone is looking for him over the issue, he was categorical that, “anyone who wants to come and get me, we shall give the facts the way I have told you.”
EACC has since stopped the pending payment of Sh1.7 billion until all the queries raised are answered.
Swazuri dismissed claims that they were compromised by the owner of the land saying he is ready to be probed.
He wondered why no person raised queries when the first phase payment was being approved and processed.
“Every stage of the compensation gives time; we have a 30-day notice of the intention to acquire… only the private owner came. After 30 days, we had 15 days of inquiries, nobody else came. After that, it took us time for the Ministry of Education to ask for the money from the Treasury back and forth correspondence which took us seven months for the money to come,” he explained.
– But how did it all start? –
The Ministry of Education, he said, wrote to the commission asking them to verify and acquire the disputed piece of land.
Reason being? The two public schools were located on a private land.
Back in 2012, Swazuri said there was a National Assembly Lands committee that established that the land was privately owned followed by a court judgment that affirmed that.
Records at the Ministry of Lands also confirmed the same, according to Swazuri.
That, he said, was followed by a directive by the former Attorney General Githu Muigai, who gave the go-ahead for the acquisition and subsequent compensation to be done.
“We note that both Ruaraka High School and Drive-Inn Estate School are public schools. Accordingly, it is our legal advisory that the constitutional requirement of both public purpose and interest as a factor in the compulsory acquisition of private land is fulfilled,” the former AG wrote.
Lands Cabinet Secretary Farida Karoney in her submissions to National Assembly’s Land Committee said the two schools risk being evicted after investigations disclosed that the institutions were built on private land.
She noted that allotment letter issued to the school 34 years ago was irregular and that the claims made by the two schools were insincere.
According to Karoney, Hueland and Afrison Import Export Ltd were the legal and rightful owners of the 96-acre piece of land, where among other government entities the two schools have occupied 13.7 acres.
The two companies are owned by businessman Francis Mburu.
During his one of the probes by the Lands Committee, the businessman said he was ready to refund the paid Sh1.5 billion on condition the two schools will vacate the land.
The 13.7-acre piece of land is part of 96 acres owned by the businessman in Ruaraka and whose acquisition and compensation have often sparked sharp criticism.
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