Land commission officials to shed light over KICC

Lawmakers have summoned the Ministry of Lands and the National Lands Commission (NLC) to appear before it next week to furnish them with details over the status of the land on which the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) sits on.

The MPs who sit in the National Assembly’s Public Investments Committee on Energy chaired by Pokot South MP David Pkosing claimed that the process of acquiring the title deeds was too slow due to bureaucracies and barriers emanating from the two departments.

At a meeting with the Lands Principal Secretary Nixon Korir, the lawmakers said they will not allow NLC to interfere with the process as it is already listed as an interested party in the whole deal.

NLC is supposed to produce letters of allotment and forward them to the Ministry of lands to enable them produce a title deed.

Said Korir: “This is a matter that is affecting our country and we should not allow the National Lands Commission to be a bottleneck. The Ministry’s accounting officer is the Principal Secretary with the NLC as an interested party. You should not allow them to interfere with what we want, which is the title for KICC land.”

He added: “Next week, the Ministry should be able to tell us why it has taken them this long to present the title deed. NLC should also appear before them to explain to members why it appears to be an impediment in ensuring that the KICC land remains with Kenyans.”

The lawmakers argued that the KICC matter is an emotional issue which needs to be dealt with owing to the fact that the building is an iconic building which ought to be protected.

Aldai MP Marianne Kitany said that at the moment, three pieces of land are in contention and they include the land between parliament and City Hall Way, Garden Square and COMESA Grounds.

She said: “Three pieces of land are in contention and need to be addressed. All we want from the PS is the title of the land.”

The decision by the committee comes after Auditor General Nancy Gathungu over the years flagged the issue of the title deeds arguing that it is not registered in the name of the KICC.

The identity of the person or entity in whose name the title deed of the land which is valued at Sh2.29 billion is yet to be known.

The intrigues surrounding the KICC land comes hardly months after the Environment and Land Court ruled that the land belongs to the government, after revoking the title issued to the Kenya African National Union (KANU) in May 1969.

Justice Jacqueline Mogeni argued that the land was illegally and unlawfully acquired by KANU, the independent party.

She further issued a declaration that the Ministry of Tourism is the lawful owner of the land.

“The allocation of the property to Kanu without following legal procedure is unlawful and illegal,” she said.

She questioned how late President Daniel Arap Moi was allocated the land that was surveyed and allotted for public use.

She observed that KANU did not present the procedure of how public land was alienated and then allocated to the chairman of a political party.

Kanu filed the case before the environment and land court in 2020. It sought to reclaim the land saying it was allocated to it May 1969 by the commissioner of lands.

The Kenyatta International Convention Centre sometimes seems to have been swamped in controversy ever since the foundation of the 32-story building was laid back in 1967.

In those days, and for more or less the first half of its existence, the building was known as the Kenyatta Conference Centre, or KCC.

At some point in the 1980s, they added the word ‘International’ and it became the KICC.

Between October 1969, when Kenya became a de facto one-party state, until the run-up to the country’s reversion to multiparty democratic status in 1990, the issues around the building and its ownership were relegated to the backburner. After all, Kanu was the government and the government was Kanu.

It was the building that housed the ruling party Kanu’s headquarters and, therefore, was presumably owned by that party, and that was the end of it, as far as many were concerned.

However, the 1990-91 report by the then Controller and Auditor General DG Njoroge made the firm assertion that the building was actually owned by the government and not the ruling party.

The Controller and Auditor General’s office was regarded as the last word on the government’s finances, assets and liabilities. But this issue had touched an already sensitive Kanu, which was facing its first major electoral challenge in more than 20 years, in a tender spot.